


Project: Guardian

by MaryPSue



Category: Guardians of Childhood - William Joyce, Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Abduction, Alternate Universe, Brainwashing, Community: rotg_kink, Gen, Human Experimentation, hints of sweettooth and whatever NightlightxKatherine is called, if it isn't Bedtime Stories I'm going to be severely disappointed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-22
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2017-12-15 18:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 39,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/852479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryPSue/pseuds/MaryPSue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Guardians are more than soldiers, carefully crafted and 'reprogrammed' from unremarkable people into deadly and unstoppable human weapons. Their powers are unimaginable, their ingenuity legendary, their obedience unwavering. </p><p>Kozmotis never quite got the hang of the 'obedience' part.</p><p>When he is officially declared a failed experiment, the enigmatic Mr. Moon saves him from certain death, planning to use Kozmotis to help him bring down the project that produced the Guardians and destroyed countless lives. But Kozmotis has his own plans, starting with rescuing his daughter before she suffers his fate. That is, if the introduction of a new Guardian doesn't complicate matters...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt: http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/2389.html?thread=5127253#cmt5127253
> 
> I just really like fictional secret evil government experiments. (This is about the fourth fandom where I've tried to write a fic in an AU setting like this, and the first one where the fic hasn't turned out shamefully bad.)

“Subject: Pitch Black. Male, forty-six years old, seventy-seven inches tall, weighing eighty-three point five kilograms, received a five-hundred-milligram initial injection, has developed advanced tenebrakinesis and negatively-oriented empathic ability.”

There’s a voice, cool and female and emotionless, babbling away somewhere above him. The room smells of disinfectant and dread and the lingering metallic traces of blood.

“Subject has consistently rejected personality conditioning and, as of now, is officially designated a failure.”

Kozmotis blinks open his eyes, has to shut them again. A brilliant halogen light hangs directly above him, and brightly-coloured afterimages dance across the insides of his eyelids.

“It is recommended that no future subjects be drawn from high-ranking military positions. Lower-ranking positions are, of course, still acceptable.”

There’s a wet, sticky cough, and another voice, this one male and deep and dismissive, says, “I’ve got no use for an uncooperative failure. Have it neutralized.”

“Yes, sir,” the female voice replies.

Kozmotis has neutralized enough hostiles in his day to know that this does _not_ bode well. Whenever someone starts using that kind of language, it means that someone else is going to die. He moves to sit up, but meets resistance. He’s tied to the bed, strapped down with fleece-lined restraints like something out of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest_.

He forces himself to open his eyes, avoiding looking directly at the blinding circle of the halogen lamp in order to see who else is in the room with him, what they’re doing, what opportunities might be offered for escape. It’s too bright in here for proper shadow, the whole room gleaming antiseptic white and stainless steel like a hospital operating room. Like in a hospital operating room, the people gathered around the bed are masked and gowned, except for three – a bored, mousy-looking woman in nondescript business clothes, a man in a tailored black suit which nevertheless hangs awkwardly on his powerful frame, and a small, round man, who only comes up to the woman’s shoulder, dressed all in white and bald as a cue ball. No – that’s not right, there’s a single lock of platinum-blonde hair curling over his forehead. A peculiar fashion statement, to be sure, but not important. Kozmotis returns to scanning the room.

There’s only one door, a sliding door that appears to lead out into an airlock. Locked steel cabinets line one wall, a stainless-steel industrial-sized sink set into the counter. No windows, white-washed cinderblock walls, and the ceiling is low. He must be underground. The vents along the top of the wall are too small for a cat to get through, much less a person.

There’s a large grate in the very centre of the white tile floor, and the grout around it is stained a rusty brownish-red.

He swallows down the bile that rises in his throat at the sight. He’s seen this kind of setup before, heard the screams that come out of this kind of room. It’s part of the reason he joined the military, to help bring down authorities that spread terror and thrive on pain. He won’t deny that he’s killed, he’s done things he’d never tell his daughter about, but this kind of cold, clinical, bureaucratic approach to atrocity is something he’s never been able to stomach. He’d do anything to stop the monsters who commit these crimes, who take away people’s humanity before they take their lives. And he has seen enough to know what _anything_ really means.

The thought that now it’s happening here, to his own people, and he’s powerless to stop it, hurts worse than any torture ever could.

The man in the black suit sniffs, sounding more like he’s got a cold than the dismissive noise he obviously meant it to be. “And would someone _please_ sedate that or something? It’s creepy, having those eyes watching me.”

“It seems a shame to waste all of Mr. Shalazar’s hard work,” the small man in white interjects. His voice is surprisingly firm and carrying, for all its mildness.

“Mr. Shalazar’s hard work is all over this damn compound. And this bastard’s resisted reprogramming every time we've tried it. It's not worth the time or the money anymore, not now that we've got the other subjects,” the man in the black suit shoots back, sniffling loudly. “Good riddance, I say. Miss Seward, handkerchief.” He turns and walks towards the door, holding out a hand. The mousy-looking woman rolls her eyes and digs in her pocket, running after the man in the black suit with short, mincing footsteps.

The man in the white suit lingers for a moment, looking up and meeting Kozmotis’ eyes. And then, so quickly that Kozmotis thinks he might have imagined it, the little man winks. The silver crescent-moon pin on his old-fashioned cravat winks, too, the light glancing off of it as he turns to leave.

Just as the man in white crosses the threshold of the door, the halogen light flickers. It’s only for a fraction of a second, but for that fraction of a second, the room is full of stark black shadows.

When the light flickers back on, Kozmotis is free and the bed is empty.


	2. Chapter 2

“Containment breach in Sector 5, containment breach in Sector 5, security personnel to Sector 5…”

It’s dark. He blinks open his eyes, and it’s light. His Man of Moon is smiling at him, and he smiles back.

“Nightlight,” his Man of Moon says, and he flickers to attention. “There’s something I need you to do for me.”

…

“The lights were only out for a second. He can’t have gotten far.”

Kozmotis leans against the wall, trying to catch his breath. Shadow-travel is taxing; he feels as exhausted as he did after his first day of basic training. He’s got to keep moving, though, or the guards the voices around the corner belong to are going to catch him in the middle of the open hallway, and he’s in no fit state to fight.

“Surveillance says he’s still in the building. They’re checking all the cams, it’s just a matter of time before they find him.”

_Dammit_.

Kozmotis pushes himself off the wall, back onto his feet. It doesn’t sound like the guards are getting any closer, and they don’t seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. But if he moves too much or too quickly, they’ll definitely hear him. And he’s sure they don’t have orders to take him alive.

Still, if there’s one thing he’s gotten from this organization’s sorry attempts at ‘reprogramming’, it’s a solid understanding of how to work his new abilities.

He drops to one knee, smooth and soundless, and puts a hand to the slightly-sticky laminate flooring inside the patch of shadow he casts. It spreads out around his hand, tendrils of dark that stretch and warp and grow fainter the farther they reach. Not strong enough for combat, but more than enough for reconnaissance.

There are two guards casting shadows in the hall beyond, armed but with their weapons holstered, moving slowly, almost casually. If they’d been his men they’d never have been this lax, not with a dangerous hostile loose in the area. He’ll have to teach them the error of their ways.

These halls are fluorescent-lit; the bulbs flickering as the gas inside them glows and fizzles with the alternating current. It isn’t hard to find one weaker than the others, put it out with a simple nudge.

The guards go quiet.

“Was that -”

He doesn’t give the man time to finish the sentence. The spikes of apprehension from both guards gives him the power boost he needs to wrap the new sliver of darkness around unprotected throats, bash heads together with enough force to put both men under. For one black and ugly moment, he considers killing them then and there. It won’t do any real good, they’re only a small, insignificant part of the evil here, and yet by their silence, their mere presence, they’re letting that evil continue. And besides, if he gets rid of them now, there’ll be two fewer guards to hinder his escape.

He shakes the feeling off, leaves them lying unconscious in the hallway behind him.

…

There are two Tall Ones sleeping on the floor. One is bleeding at the temple, but both are breathing. The shadows here smell foul, and curl into nasty shapes where his light touches them.

Nightlight grins, and glows a little brighter, and follows the trail of foul-smelling shadows.

…

There are three of them around the next corner, coming up on it too quickly to try the same trick with the shadows. Kozmotis swallows a curse, scans the narrow hallway for somewhere to hide, and finding nothing, presses himself flat against the wall by the corner. He hasn’t got the energy to try to duck through shadow again, and even if he had, he wouldn’t know where to go.

He should really have taken the other guards’ guns.

The first guard to round the corner gets yanked into a stranglehold, pulled tight against Kozmotis’ chest as a human shield even as he cuts off the man’s air. The other two are quick to react, but not quite quick enough.

“Let him go,” the woman holding the impressive handgun says. “You don’t have anywhere to go.”

“That’s what the directors thought, too,” Kozmotis bluffs. The woman’s smile is pitying, but her eyes are steel and they don’t leave his face.

“Drop ‘im,” the burly man demands, his voice surprisingly soft. Kozmotis scans the hall, mentally flicking through scenarios, trying to figure out the best way out of this mess.

“All right,” he says, at last, releasing the first guard, who stumbles forward gasping in air like a drowning man. Kozmotis raises both hands –

\- and before the bullets can reach him, pulls up the first guard’s shadow and lets the bullets strike into it and clatter harmlessly to the floor, momentum spent. Before any of the guards can respond, he moves, diving out of the line of fire while coaxing the shadow up and over the first guard like a wave. His screams don’t last long, barely audible as they are over the pounding of gunfire.

One of the bullets ricochets, somehow, and the light directly overhead shatters. The woman swears, a string of curses abruptly cut off when thick black shadow slams her and the burly guard against the wall. She sinks down, disarmed and looking dazed; her partner reaches for the pistol in his shoulder holster, and Kozmotis slams him against the wall again, for good measure. He goes down heavily and doesn’t come back up.

Kozmotis reaches up, and out, and every light in that span of hallway explodes at once, a chorus of loud _pop_ s and showers of sparks, plunging the hall into darkness. Maybe it’ll just make it easier for them to find him, but he thinks the gunfire probably did that already. He’s lost the element of surprise. Now, he needs to be armed, needs to use the terrain to his advantage. After all, there are only two ways he can go from here; forward, or back the way he came. And even if they didn’t know how much shadow-travel takes out of him, he’d still expect them to send the heavy artillery to box him in. It isn’t a matter of whether there’ll be another confrontation, but when.

He hurries forwards, carefully scanning the hall before him for doors or branches which might conceal an ambush or offer an escape. The lights overhead flicker out in his wake.

…

The trail leads straight into darkness.

Nightlight pauses where the first curling shadowsedge away from his toes, and draws the weapon his Man of Moon has given him. It’s not quite like a dagger, and it’s not quite like a light, but it glows brightly enough to drive back the nastiest of the shadows and he has no doubt it will cut quite sharply when he asks it to.

He holds it high, and he smiles his brightest smile, and he darts bravely forward into the dark.

…

It’s too quiet.

There should have been something by now, should have been some response to the gunfire and the dark. Surely whoever is in charge of surveillance has seen the trail he’s left behind him. But there’s been nothing, no sign of life anywhere, and Kozmotis finds himself just waiting for the axe to fall.

He stops at the intersection of two hallways, unsure of which direction to take. He still hasn’t been able to find any doors or any sign that these hallways serve a purpose other than to confound him, and he’s just beginning to suspect that he’s walked straight into a trap when that suspicion is confirmed. A section of wall slips soundlessly aside in the hallway to his right, answering his question about where the doors are. Five – no, six black-clad figures spill out, all of them masked and armed with almost comically oversized assault rifles. He turns to his left, and yes, there’s another small squad coming from the other hall.  The sound of booted feet against the laminate flooring tells him that the way forward, too, is blocked. At least someone in this building knows how to coordinate an ambush.

They’re all so overconfident knowing that they’ve got him boxed in. Despite the fact that they’re facing a lone, unarmed man who has nonetheless somehow managed to evade death three times in the past hour, not one of them is properly afraid. It’s like an itch just behind his eyes, and the smile that curls across his face feels sharp and unfamiliar.

He’ll just have to change that.

…

There’s a commotion up ahead, shouts and bangs and screams and low rolling thunder. No, not thunder. _Laughter_. Nightlight has heard laughter before, often, has an easy laugh himself, but that always sounds bright. Not this dark and strange and maddened sound. For the first time, he frowns.

His smile returns, though, when the light from his dagger pierces through the swirling dark and points him straight toward the Tall One he’s come to find. The strange and sordid laughter is his, as are the nasty-looking shadows, and for just a moment Nightlight pauses, because the screams do not. This dark and sinister stranger is the one his Man of Moon has sent him to find, and suddenly Nightlight knows why he was given the dagger.

He raises it, without hesitation, and glowing as fiercely as he can, flies straight into the battle and the dark.

…

Three members of Alpha Team are down, Beta Team’s compromised, and William is starting to understand why they sent three full squads to take down this sonofabitch. He’d laughed at the idea before; now, he’s wishing they had another squad or two to back them up. Or maybe an army. Guns aren’t going to be enough. The bastard fights like a madman, without any regard for personal safety and with a kind of unholy glee. It doesn’t help that half the time they can’t even _see_ him, and he comes out of –

_Shitshitshitshit!_

William fires, aimlessly, blindly, but the bullets can’t touch the shadows and the gun is wrenched from his hands before he can react. Something collides with his chest, knocking the breath out of him even as it knocks him off his feet, and his vision explodes in stars. He gasps for breath, trying to blink away the afterimages, trying to _move_ , but he can’t, he’s going to die here -

There’s a burst of brilliant light that shorts out his goggles, floods the hall, drives all of the shadows away. When it clears, the fluorescent lights flicker back on, the dark losing its strange heaviness and mindless menace. There’s no clue left behind to explain what just happened, nothing but black-armoured bodies lying strewn across the hallway and chunks blasted out of the walls.

Pitch Black is gone.

William doesn’t know if he should be relieved or even more worried.


	3. Chapter 3

Kozmotis wakes up, and immediately wishes he hadn’t.

Every inch of him feels raw, as though he’s been sandblasted and rolled through salt, and the pain that knifes behind his eyes is to a headache what a tank is to a Glock. Still, he tries to sit up, which is the second-stupidest idea he’s had since waking up, the first being waking up in the first place. His left shoulder explodes in pain, and he falls back with a curse.

A faint bluish glow flickers to life somewhere to his left, illuminating the space he’s found himself in. It’s a small room, not much more than a closet, and lit only by whatever’s causing the blue glow. The glow which, he notices, is growing stronger by the second.

A moment later, someone leans over him, and he has to do his best not to stare. Judging by the face, it’s a boy, no older than thirteen or fourteen, pale as the moon and slender as a sunbeam, with oddly-curled pure white hair. This would be a strange enough sight on its own, but the boy’s unusual appearance isn’t what causes Kozmotis to boggle. No, that’s because the bluish glow is coming _from_ the boy.

His worried expression splits into a broad, genuine smile when he sees that Kozmotis is awake, and he glows a little more brightly. It’s enough for Kozmotis to be able to make out the shape of a door in the dark, pick out the outlines of a railing along the walls.

“Hello,” Kozmotis offers, because he doesn’t know yet if this strange, spectral boy is hostile or not, and it doesn’t hurt to be polite. The boy doesn’t respond, at least, not in words, but he does cant his head to one side and give Kozmotis a friendly grin. Kozmotis tries to smile back, hoping it doesn’t look too much like a grimace of pain. “Where are we?”

The boy shrugs, gestures with one spindly arm towards the walls. Blue reflects back, eerie and ghostly in the metal of three of the walls. The fourth is mostly taken up by the door, two imposing sliding panels that meet in the middle. It is this that gives him his first clue as to where he is.

It looks like the entrance to the arena, the steel-walled, soundproof testing room where they’d tried time and again to break him to their will, with varying levels of success. They’d kept him in a tiny chamber much like this one until they wanted to begin the trials. The walls seem to close in on him at the thought, and he wishes he could just forget how they could electrify the floor if he didn’t respond quickly enough.

“What happened?” he asks, trying to push the thought aside. He doesn’t really need a recap; fragments of memories are beginning to trickle back. Screams, muzzle flashes in the darkness, the acrid smell of gunfire and plaster and blood. Searing light and pain. Is it a recent memory half-lost, or an old one half- unburied? He doesn’t quite know for sure. “How did I end up here? And… _why_ do I feel like I’ve been sandblasted and stabbed?”

The boy’s bright smile turns sheepish, and he ducks his head out of Kozmotis’ line of sight. When he pops back up (literally pops, like a jack-in-the-box), he’s holding a single, perfect, deadly-sharp shard of crystal. It seems to catch the boy’s soft glow and channel it from base to wicked point, gleaming like a small sun is trapped within it. Kozmotis flinches back before he even gets a good look at the thing, his shoulder screaming in protest.

“ _Wait_ ,” he hisses between his teeth, the pieces beginning to slot into place. “You _stabbed_ me?” He’s only dimly aware of the prickle on the edge of his senses that means the shadows have woken up and taken notice, responding to his distress.

The boy’s eyebrows furrow at the way the shadows curl, and he raises the prismatic dagger, forcing them to recoil. Kozmotis tries, unsuccessfully, to push himself to his feet. Why this strange creature hasn’t yet finished him off, he doesn’t know, but he is now very sure that its intentions are not friendly.

He has a sinking feeling that he’s been captured by one of the project’s successes.

He’s only faced a few of the Guardians, the barely-human supersoldiers that the project was designed to produce, but they’ve always been ruthless, unswayable, and utterly unmerciful. If this boy is one of them, Kozmotis won’t escape this encounter. Then again, if the boy were a Guardian, Kozmotis would already be dead. Soldiers like that don’t miss.

Unless – he shudders at the thought – the higher-ups have changed their minds. Unless they’re so _impressed_ with his aborted escape that they want him alive.

“What do you want with me?” Kozmotis demands, and the boy shrugs his slim shoulders, a frustrated frown passing over his features like a cloud across the sun. He still doesn’t speak, and for the first time Kozmotis wonders if he even can. Muteness wouldn’t be the strangest result to come from the researchers’ tender ministrations.

He sighs, and slumps back onto the floor. If the strange boy intends to kill him, then he’ll fight. If the people in charge have decided he needs to be tormented further, then he’ll find out soon enough. Until then, though, he might as well conserve his energy, give his aching body the rest it craves.

“What’s your name?” he asks, into the silence. The boy flickers, bright and then dim, barely brighter than a moonless night. It might be a language of sorts, but Kozmotis can’t understand it.

He blows out a breath, and tugs on the dark behind his head. It coils down and laps lazily around his ears, moving almost as lethargically as he feels. It’s reassuring to know that he has a weapon, though, something to defend himself if (when) he needs it. It’s reassuring to know that in all of this madness, something is on his side.

It’s then that the room lurches, lets out a long, metallic groan, and begins to move.

Kozmotis shouts in surprise and tries to leap to his feet, which refuse to cooperate. He lands flat on his ass before he realizes that the room he’s found himself in isn’t a room at all. It’s an elevator. An elevator which, currently, is rising up towards some unknown. The spectral boy isn’t worried at all, but that really isn’t reassuring. 

It’s a short ride, but it feels like a lifetime. The cheery _ding!_ that heralds their arrival sounds more like a death knell. He moves to press himself flat against the elevator wall, to at least try to make himself less vulnerable, but his legs are still far too shaky and weak, and he flops back onto the floor. At least this time he’s upright.

When the doors slide open, he flings an arm up to protect his eyes from the sudden glare, silently cursing himself for not realizing that the light would be so harsh after the boy’s soft glow. His old commander would give him hell if he could see Kozmotis now, blind, injured, and practically helpless quite literally at the feet of an unknown opponent. He hopes that whatever is about to happen will at least be quick.

“General Pitchiner. It’s an honour to actually meet you.”

Kozmotis looks straight up, which turns out to be a thoroughly stupid idea. He winces away from the light, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to ignore the afterimages fireworking against his eyelids.

He doesn’t need to see the face, though, to recognize the voice of the man who may have saved his life.

He’s dimly aware of movement, and the man in the white suit sounds shocked and repentant when he says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think the light would be quite so painful. I’m afraid I did know that the dagger would hurt, but it was unfortunately necessary. There was really no other way of stopping you, short of putting a bullet through your head, and that would just have been a shame…won’t you come out of the elevator?”

Kozmotis bites back the sharp retort he’s longing to deliver. The man in the white suit seems completely pragmatic and more than a little unhinged, a dangerous combination. The last thing Kozmotis wants to do right now is provoke him.

Kozmotis wobbles a little when he stands, but is pleased to discover that his legs actually support him this time, rather than buckling immediately under him. He still feels strained and raw, but the feeling is fading, and when he opens his eyes the afterimages have finally disappeared.

The man in the white suit is shorter than Kozmotis had thought he was, and slightly rounder, and his smile is huge and charming. “I’m afraid no longer a general,” Kozmotis says. “And you have me at a disadvantage.”

The little man claps his hands together once, smiling broadly. “Ah, of course! Where are my manners? Manfred Ignatius Moon, at your service.”

Kozmotis raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t comment. It would hardly be polite, and besides, he’s in no position to judge.

“And of course, you’ve met Nightlight,” the man – Mr. Moon? – continues, waving towards the spectral boy, who bobs his head in something resembling a bow. Kozmotis inclines his head, as well, and the boy stifles a silent laugh behind his hand. “Nightlight is my – shall we say, bodyguard? I asked him to bring you here, and it seems that it was a very good thing that I did.”

“Thank you for putting out the lights for me,” Kozmotis says quickly. The memories are threatening to turn from a trickle to a flood, and he could swear he can smell the cold-iron tang of terror and blood intermingled. “I have to ask _why_ , though.”

Mr. Moon’s round face turns serious, his smile hidden in the creases of his eyes. “I need your help.”


	4. Chapter 4

“My help?” Kozmotis parrots dumbly. He’s sure he must be gawking. Mr. Moon doesn’t seem to notice, although Nightlight’s smirk seems a little too self-satisfied.

“Yes. I’m in dire need of a strategist and a leader.”

He can’t be hearing this. The man, Kozmotis decides, is more than a _little_ unhinged. His voice is clipped and tense when he answers, “I’ve been officially declared a failure. As far as Project Guardian is concerned, I no longer exist. Why go to all that trouble if you only wanted to -”

“You misunderstand.” Mr. Moon sighs, and Kozmotis takes a step back, out of reach, just in case. “I don’t want you back in the _project_. It was enough work to make the director of defense agree to have you decommissioned. No, the project has gotten out of hand. The Guardians were never meant to be mindless weapons.”

“You’re in charge,” Kozmotis snaps. He doesn’t really know what position the man occupies, but it seems clear that Mr. Moon is someone important. “If you’re so displeased with the fruits of your labours, then put an end to them.”

“I understand that you’re upset -”

That’s the understatement of the century. Kozmotis only barely manages to suppress a bitter laugh. “Upset? No, I’m not upset. I’m _upset_ when the barista gets my coffee order wrong. I’m _upset_ when there’s an accident on the freeway and I’m stuck in traffic for an hour. I’m not _upset_ about being stolen away from my home and my family and my _life_ to be used as a human guinea pig, or a pawn in some depraved game of soldiers!” He’s ranting now, his voice hovering on the edge of a shout, and he pauses in an attempt to salvage what little is left of his composure, running a hand distractedly through his hair. His headache is back and beginning to build, mounting pressure behind his eyes like an itch he can’t quite scratch. “I’m not _upset_. And I am not your toy, to be played with when you like and forgotten about afterwards.”

Mr. Moon’s smile is impassive, his true emotions unreadable.  “This is why I chose you,” he says, and there’s a hint of pride in his pleasant voice that makes Kozmotis’ skin crawl. “I knew you’d understand.”

“Did you hear a single word I just -”

“Of course!” Mr. Moon seems far too delighted with himself. “And you’re absolutely right. My mother and father would be rolling in their graves if they could see the cruelty their hard work is being used to commit. It’s time someone put a stop to it.”

“And that ‘someone’ couldn’t be _you_?”

Mr. Moon shakes his head, and his eyes turn sad. “It’s gone so far beyond my control – not that I was in control in the first place. I was so young when my parents died, you see, and the trustee they chose to take charge of Moonclipper Corp was unfortunately _not_ trustworthy. I have no real power here. All I can do is watch – and, occasionally, influence.” His eyes actually _twinkle_.

Kozmotis frowns, and begins to scan the room for possible escape routes. He has the very strong feeling he’s going to need them.

He’s just cataloguing the points of access – elevator, a door on the far wall, and the walls of plate-glass windows that look out over miles and miles of wilderness – when Nightlight catches his eye. The look the glowing boy gives Kozmotis isn’t truly threatening, but it is unnerving enough to make him turn his attention back to Mr. Moon.

“So this is your idea of influence?” he says, finally, when it becomes clear that Mr. Moon is waiting for an answer. “Getting a discarded test subject to do your dirty work for you?”

“No.” Mr. Moon’s smile turns sharp. “Asking an experienced soldier for his help. I intend to do whatever it takes to bring this project down, in flames if necessary. But in this endeavour, I suspect I will be of more use from inside.”

Kozmotis has worked with one or two insiders before, and in his experience, anyone claiming to want to remain within a power structure to bring it down from inside is just working both angles, trying to make sure that they are the ones who come out on top. Often at the expense of both sides.

“No,” he says, firmly.

“I’m sorry?”

His head is throbbing, and the way Nightlight grips that _damn_ dagger doesn’t so much worry him as piss him off. “No. I won’t work for you.”

Mr. Moon blinks, and a tiny wicked part of Kozmotis is delighted by how nonplussed he looks. “You won’t – You _do_ know that you weren’t the only one who was snatched away from a home or a family? And they’re still taking people. There are _children_ out there right now who are being put through the same hell as you were -”

“And I’m sure you only want to protect them all, not turn them into devoted, voiceless _bodyguards_ ,” Kozmotis snaps. Nightlight takes a step back, and from the way his brow furrows Kozmotis can tell he’s struck a nerve. He wishes he hadn’t – it’s not the boy’s fault, after all – but can’t bring himself to be too sorry. It’s all too obvious now that Mr. Moon considers himself a chessmaster, and rather than feeling guilty enough to relent, all Kozmotis feels is a flare of anger at the man’s clumsy attempts at emotional manipulation. Now, more than ever, he’s sure he’s making the right decision. “I have no love for the project or the people behind it, but I will not bring it down for _you._ And I don’t need your help.” He turns on his heel, sweeping back towards the elevator.

He stops dead, though, at Mr. Moon’s next words.

“Those children? Your daughter is one of them.”

He can’t move. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. When thought finally returns, it comes riding a wave of razor-edged rage, irresistible as the tide and deadly as an undertow.

He turns back, and judging by the sudden shiver of fear from both Mr. Moon and Nightlight, his expression must be terrible. He can’t bring himself to care.

“Where is she?”

He’s surprised by how level his voice sounds, how calm. How unlike the hurricane of rage and terror and hate boiling in his head.

It’s a long moment before Mr. Moon speaks. Too long. “I think you don’t -”

“I will kill you where you stand if you don’t tell me where my daughter is _right. Now._ ”

Nightlight draws his dagger, and the shadows stir to life, sluggish and sleepy. Kozmotis pulls them to him, gathering dark around himself against that burning light. A single long shadow reaches out, almost without his having to think, and falls across Mr. Moon’s round face.

To his credit, the man shows none of the fear that flickers through his mind. “I don’t know where she is. I only saw the paperwork when she was brought in. All I know is that she’s here, somewhere.”

“And you thought it would be a good idea to use that knowledge as a _bargaining chip_?” Kozmotis spits the words, clenching a fist to keep from wringing the man’s pathetic neck.

Nightlight steps forward, putting himself between Mr. Moon and the shadows, his light bright enough to make Kozmotis’ eyes sting and his dagger held ready to strike. His form is impressive; he clearly knows how to handle a knife, without any amateurish dramatics. Kozmotis’ shoulder twinges, and he bites back a snarl.

“I will find her,” he promises. “And then I will burn this place to the ground.”

Before Mr. Moon can say anything more, before Nightlight can move, Kozmotis slips backwards into shadow and away.


	5. Chapter 5

“Subject: Jack Frost. Trial number sixty-eight,” the voice on the intercom says.

Jack Frost. That’s his name. How does he know? Because the men in white told him so. He thinks perhaps he had another name, once. He thinks perhaps he had a lot of things, once. But that was a long, long time ago.

The ice creaks.

“Commence trial.”

The ice shatters. The heavy steel door slides aside, dragging the shards after it. Jack (because that _must_ be his name, he certainly doesn’t have any other, and why would the men in white lie?) wonders why his ice is thickest over the door. They might punish him for freezing over the little chamber, but he gets so _bored_ waiting for the trials to start.

_The trials_. They’d been easy to begin with, making swirls of frost, learning to dance with the wind, filling rooms with knee-deep snow. It had been _fun_. And then one day, he’d walked out into the arena and a girl in a white kimono had tried to kill him.

And that had been the start of a whole _different_ kind of fun.

The shock that hits him is familiar by now, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less, doesn’t mean he doesn’t jump away from the feeling of being violently turned inside out. He stumbles out into the arena, pulling himself together. The soles of his bare feet are smoking slightly, but he pretends not to notice because the men in white are watching, always watching, and they don’t like him to show pain.

He lets ice grow on the soles of his feet to put out the burning, and looks around for his opponent.

The arena seems empty, but Jack doesn’t believe it is for an instant. He’s faced a boy the size of a mouse, a woman whose whole body shifted colours to match whatever she stood in front of. There will be an opponent, somewhere. They love to see him fight.

But for once, nothing happens. And before long, Jack finds himself growing bored again. Before he’s really given it any thought, he’s forgotten all about the trial and the shocks and his opponent, focusing his entire being on whipping up a blizzard in the middle of the arena. If he can’t fight, at least he can put on a show.

The wind whispers a warning in his ear, and he dives forward into the air. Something heavy whips past him with a noise like tearing silk. It misses by inches, and Jack’s heart leaps.

_Finally!_

He whirls in a circle, conjuring a series of razor-sharp ice shards that slice through the storm in all directions. He isn’t quite sure where his opponent actually _is_. Clever of them to use Jack’s own powers to his advantage, let Jack distract himself and conjure up a smokescreen at the same time. It won’t do whoever it is much good, though, because Jack is in his own element. The arena is blanketed in white, its cold steel walls growing a thick coat of frost, the air cold enough to make even _him_ shiver. Anyone else will be losing fingers soon enough.

The boomerang that flies out of his snowstorm and clips his shoulder, sending him spinning wildly out of control, seems to say otherwise, though.

Jack frowns, and lets himself be carried up and around inside his snowstorm, trying to calculate the weapon’s trajectory in his head. If it caught him on the way back around, then it would have had to have been thrown from –

_there!_

Jack just has time to set his sights on the figure, little more than a grey blur in the teeth of the storm, before the wind launches him at his opponent, as eager for blood as he is. The sharp bite of pain when he moves his right arm is an inconvenience, nothing more; the bones’ll mend soon enough, and if he doesn’t fight now he’ll have more than just one broken bone to worry about. Ice builds in his good hand, forming into an icicle longer than he is tall and deadly sharp at the end.

He’s inches from driving it into the grey shape when he sees what it really is and veers up, too late, too late. Someone slams into him from above, knocking them both headfirst into the drift he’d mistaken for a figure. The broken bones in his arm grind against each other, and for an instant Jack’s vision goes white, lungs freezing shut at the pain.

He recovers fast, though, as he always has, grinning into the ice crystals caking his face. “There you are! I was starting to think you’d wimped out on me.”

He doesn’t get an answer. Wasn’t really expecting one. None of the others have talked to him. Some of them probably couldn’t, either because they were missing their voices, or because they didn’t understand language anymore.  It doesn’t matter. Jack talks anyway, talks and talks and talks even though he can’t remember the last time anyone acknowledged his voice.

Claws slash through his thin shirt, shred his shoulders, draw lines of fire down his back. Jack curls into himself, protecting his head and his vitals from the claws while he gathers ice around his good arm. As soon as it gains an edge, he whirls upwards with all the force the wind can lend him. His makeshift blade catches his opponent square across the face and his momentum knocks them both over, into another drift. But this time, Jack is free, and this time, Jack has the weapon, and now they’re going to play by _his_ rules.

“- lockdown, halt all procedures and -”

The voice on the intercom cuts through the howl of the wind, and Jack stops dead in the middle of his hurricane, the snow growing light and fluffy without his direction. This is something new, something interesting…perhaps even something _fun_. The voice doesn’t sound particularly entertained, though; instead it sounds strained, even a little scared.

The big overhead lights flash on with a noise like a slamming door, blinding Jack for a long moment. From the loud snarl that comes from the snowbank, he guesses that his opponent is having the same difficulty. The voice on the intercom is familiar, but the edge of panic in it isn’t.

“Trial suspended until further notice. Cease all hostilities immediately.”

Jack drops into a small drift with a whooshing sigh, disappointed and maybe just a little relieved. And just when it looked like things were about to get good, too.

His opponent does not take their orders so peacefully. Jack’s jaw drops, quite literally, when the other actually _speaks_. “What? Oh, you have _got_ to be bloody kidding me. Coddlin’ the anklebiter’s not going to give ‘im that killer instinct, yanno!”

He doesn’t get an answer. Jack could have told him he wouldn’t. The men in white don’t ever answer.

“Return to your chambers immediately and await further instructio-” The voice over the intercom cuts off abruptly, and there are a lot of whispers and then an ear-piercing whine and a click. The arena goes eerily silent. The unspoken ‘or else’ hangs heavy in the air.

Jack puts the brakes on the snowstorm reluctantly (play nice Jack do as you’re told) and gets a good look at his opponent for the first time as the other man picks himself out of the snowbank Jack threw him into. He’s six feet easy, dark-skinned, and bare-chested despite the good three feet of snow. The claws that left Jack bloody and torn up are thick and black and attached to broad hands that would look less out of place on an artist, and the man’s got an impressive set of fangs to match. His slate-coloured hair looks soft as rabbit fur and trails down his spine like it’s trying to become a pelt.  He looks like he could snap Jack in half, and probably _could_ , too – Jack’s got bird bones, which would be a liability if he didn’t get along with the wind so well. If he didn’t have bright and jagged ice to keep everyone trying to hurt him at arm’s length.

The other man eyes Jack with a look of surprise that Jack is sure must mirror his own. “Christ. You really _are_ just an anklebiter, aren’t you?”

Jack doesn’t really know what that means, but it sounds dismissive, and he curls the fingers of his good hand into the snow, fully intending to hit the other man square in the face with a snowball. It’s not hostile, exactly. He wouldn’t be breaking any rules. Not that that would matter if they decide to punish him, of course, but there’s really no snowball fight that isn’t worth the trouble he’ll get into for starting it.

He drops the snowball without a thought, though, at the sound of the explosion.


	6. Chapter 6

“All departments into lockdown, repeat, all departments into lockdown…”

Nightlight ignores the voice on the intercom, perching on the chair before the wall of screens. Views of different parts of the facility flicker and buzz on each screen, and Nightlight frowns. He can’t see any sign of the foul, curling shadows.

He huffs out a soundless sigh, and shakes his head. He wouldn’t be here if his Man of Moon hadn’t asked him to find the Dark One. But his Man of Moon _has_ asked, and even though Nightlight would like nothing better than to stick the Dark One with his dagger again for being so awful to his Man of Moon, he will do as he is bid.

“Find him, please,” his Man of Moon had said. “Follow him. Help him if you can. And stop him if you have to.”

Nightlight almost hopes he’ll have to.

But first, he has to _find_ the Dark One.

A light starts blinking a cheery red on the huge desk of lights and buttons and knobs laid out before him. Nightlight tilts his head, looks at it curiously until he notices the little label saying ‘Experimental Command Centre’. He grins, brightly, and jumps lightly up from the chair.

The Tall One who had been in the chair when Nightlight arrived groans, and Nightlight stops, wondering if he might be waking up, but he only mutters something about strawberries and goes back to sleep. Nightlight leaves him sleeping on the floor, and goes to find the Experimental Command Centre.

…

Kozmotis frowns at the twisted mass of metal and glass that had been, moments ago, a rather large computer display. “I doubt that that was supposed to happen,” he says, half to himself, half to the two white-coated researchers still conscious.

The man remains silent, his fear thick enough to choke his tongue. But the woman, despite her small stature, is apparently braver than she is wise. “You really think we don’t have failsafes against break-ins and _terrorist activity_? All of that experimental data is stored in the backup server now, and you won’t get at _that_ without permission. Or an army and a couple hundred years.”

Kozmotis stares at her until the colour drains from her cheeks and she takes a step backwards, until the little seed of sensible unease in the depths of her brain finally blossoms into fright.

“Fine,” he concludes, after a silence calculated to make them both sweat. “Then we’ll do this the hard way.”

The smile that crosses his face is lazy and cruel and not entirely false.

He steps forward, dragging dark behind him, more for show than anything else. These two are not soldiers, not fighters, and once disarmed they’re as harmless as any cornered animal. He just has to keep them more scared than angry, too afraid to think of fighting back and yet not so afraid that they lash out without thinking.

“One of you,” he starts, and gives himself a point mentally when they both try not to look at the other, “is going to tell me where I can find Seraphina Pitchiner. And it really doesn’t matter to me which of you it is. The other,” and his smile grows wide enough that it’s almost a snarl, “is expendable.”

Both pairs of eyes dart towards the crumpled body on the floor behind them, only for a fraction of an instant, but more than long enough for Kozmotis to know he’s got them.

And then, he’s lost them.

The flicker of hope in the woman’s eyes as she looks past his shoulder is only barely enough warning. Kozmotis sidesteps, and just barely avoids being struck by something heavy and fast-moving. For a moment, he lets himself hope that he’s just missed one of the staff (although the thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth; he’s a tactician, a thinker, he’s supposed to cover all of these angles before barging into a situation). It’s a fool’s hope, though, quickly dashed when he spins out of the way of the second boomerang and finds himself nose-to-nose with a scowling, dark face.

“Oh, good, it’s the rabbit,” Kozmotis says, mind whirling as he tries to calculate his best chance of escape. He doesn’t have _time_ for this. “I was wondering which one of you would show up.”

“They call me _Bunny_ ,” the man in front of him snarls, and Kozmotis quickly backsteps out of the way of his dagger-like claws. It’s lucky, really, that the most easily-provoked and hair-triggered of the Guardians is the one who’s found Kozmotis. And even better, the man has come alone.

No, not quite alone, Kozmotis realizes, scanning the room. There’s a boy lurking by the door, a boy who can’t be any older than eighteen or nineteen, pale as winter and still as death. Blood is drying on his clothes and the jagged, open gashes in his shoulders, but he doesn’t seem to notice or mind. Brainwashed out of existence, Kozmotis thinks, as he dodges another blow and sidesteps a third, disappearing backwards into a flurry of dark only to emerge again behind the two researchers he still hasn’t forgotten. Poor child.

The experimenters had tried, at first, to purge the subjects of independent thought, before realizing it made them useless in situations requiring adaptation and ingenuity. Which, of course, are exactly the situations that such weapons would be needed for. The Guardians are the successful compromises, their loyalty and ruthlessness so fiercely cemented that it can override any sense of morality or empathy, conditioned to take orders but also to _think_ about their best execution.

And Kozmotis is lucky enough to be facing off against one.

Bunny lets out another barely-human growl, but he doesn’t attack, no doubt hampered by Kozmotis’ human shield. This would never have worked if the two hadn’t been researchers at the facility, Kozmotis doesn’t doubt. But they are, and this is _working_ , and it only has to work for a few seconds more -

“Up to your old tricks again, _Pitch_?” Bunny asks, and Kozmotis winces. The word is like a barb.

“ _That_ is _not_ my name.”

The smile that crosses Bunny’s face is triumphant and just a little vindictive. “You keep telling yourself that. Maybe someday it’ll be true.”

Kozmotis lunges forward, realizes too late that he’s let himself be goaded out of safety, and gets a powerful kick to the gut for his trouble. The air rushes out of his lungs and the shadows seize instinctively around him, pinning Bunny to the floor even as Kozmotis flies back. He slams into the man behind him, knocking them both to the floor and earning a scream from the woman, before the flailing dark catches her across the back of the head and she drops like a stone.

For the first time, the pale boy moves. He flickers past Kozmotis like a streak of light, close enough for Kozmotis to see that the tips of his fingers and his bare feet are stained the dark, dull purple of a bruise. He catches the woman before she can hit the ground, shifting to lay her down gently out of the way, and when he looks up he meets Kozmotis’ eyes.

Kozmotis sucks in a breath, ignoring the line of fire it burns through his chest, and manages a rather weak, “Hello.” The boy’s eyes are remarkable, the washed-out blue of ancient sea-ice and the soft grey-white of winter skies, but what’s even more extraordinary is the fact that there’s acknowledgement and life in them. Even, perhaps, a flicker of mischief.

“And who are _you_?” Kozmotis asks softly. The boy scowls, the hollows of his eyes growing darker with shadow, and raises a hand that suddenly sprouts deadly-looking icicles, but he doesn’t strike.

“Jack Frost,” the boy answers, and his voice sounds surprisingly deep and _normal_ , coming from such an ethereal slip of a thing. Kozmotis hadn’t really been expecting an answer, but even though it doesn’t really get him anywhere, he’s glad to have one.

He opens his mouth to ask another question, only to be abruptly and painfully reminded of why one should never stop to chat in the middle of a battlefield. Bunny lands on his back like a ton of bricks, one hand curling through Kozmotis’ hair, leaving gouges in his scalp, and yanks his head backwards. Before those wicked claws can come anywhere near his throat, Kozmotis picks Bunny off his back with one thick curl of dark, and flings him unceremoniously into the wreckage of the computer display.

It sparks and sputters, and Bunny twitches soundlessly as electricity courses through him. It won’t keep him down for long, Kozmotis is sure, but long enough to make an escape. He pushes himself to his feet, and smiles at the boy – Jack – not entirely insincerely.

“Well, I’d love to stick around, but I’ve got places to be, people to rescue.” He brushes himself off, glances around for the deepest patch of shadow.

He steps back, into the dark, unable to resist a touch of drama to mark his exit. His voice echoes back through the room. “And a word of warning: _Stay out of my way_.”


	7. Chapter 7

Katherine reads the last sentence, blinks, and flips through the last few pages of her book, hoping wildly that there’s another chapter hidden somewhere, or at least another paragraph. Anything but this cliffhanger!

Unfortunately, all she finds is a black page on which, in fancy white type, the name and release date of the next book in the series is printed. October. She can’t wait until October to find out what happened. She is going to _die_ , simply _perish_ from anticipation and dread and the _wait_.

“Uncle Ombric,” she wails, and her uncle sighs indulgently.

“I told you not to start reading a series before all the books are released,” he tuts.

“But _she’s going to the dark side_! They can’t just leave it there!”

Her uncle pushes himself up from his chair. “Obviously they have, or you wouldn’t be screeching about it.” He walks over, peering over her shoulder at the book. “When does the next one come out, again?”

“October. Uncle Ombric, there’s no way I’m going to last that long!” She shuts the book with a snap, and smiles up at her uncle hopefully. “Do _you_ have anything I could read?”

He twirls his beard, looking deep in thought. “Not with me,” he says, at last. “Would you like to have a look at what I’m working on instead? Perhaps that will pull you out of your despair.”

“Of course!” Katherine looks for a clear place on the desk in front of her to put down her book, and finding none, sets it instead atop a pile of hard-bound technical manuals and files. She’s careful not to move anything – her uncle’s organizational system may _look_ like it lacks rhyme or rhythm, but he knows where everything is and will spend hours tearing it all apart to find one misplaced file. “What are you building this time?”

“Not building, programming.” Ombric gestures to his computer screen. “Tell me, do you know LISP?”

“I thought that was a speech problem?” Katherine admits. Her uncle chuckles.

“Maybe I should get you a book on programming languages.”

“Maybe I’ll take a walk,” Katherine says quickly. It’s not that she’s not interested, it’s just that trying to learn languages out of books, even the ones her uncle uses to program and direct the nanobots that are his life’s work, is exhausting and worse, _boring_. At least when Ombric teaches her himself, he makes every lesson fascinating, like he’s giving her the keys to unlocking a whole other world. When Katherine tries to _read_ about Unix or C++, she just feels her head spinning.

“Don’t go far,” Ombric warns her, and Katherine laughs. He worries about her whenever she comes along to the facility, even though it’s so heavily guarded and locked down that she’s probably safer here than she is at home. She’s more likely to be struck by lightning than to get into trouble here.

Still, she promises, “No farther than the vending machines.”

“All right.” Ombric still looks uncertain, but he smiles when Katherine waves on her way out the door.

The hallways are silent save for the hum of the fluorescent lights, and Katherine doesn’t see anyone else as she walks along the rows of offices. Despite herself, she feels a little knot of unease in the pit of her stomach. Her uncle’s worry must be wearing off on her.

He’s been so protective of her since she came into his care, since her parents died in that blizzard, their car skidding off the road and into a ravine. It had been a miracle that her carseat had been flung clear, caught on the branches of a tree on the way down. Katherine, herself, takes it as a sign that she’s naturally lucky, but her uncle seems to disagree.

She stops at the vending machines and fishes in her pockets for change. The snacks on offer are rather dull, and she finally settles on a granola bar with chocolate chips. She’s just putting the coins into the slot, listening to each of them rattle their way down, when she notices a faint bluish glow reflected in the glass front of the machine. Katherine only has a moment to wonder what it might be before she realizes it’s moving, heading straight toward her.

Katherine whirls, and finds herself nose-to-nose with a boy. He’s about her height, about her age, and looks about as surprised as she feels. But most remarkably, he also throws a soft, almost spectral light. It doesn’t seem to have one discernible source, at least not that Katherine can see; he simply _glows_.

She should be scared, she thinks. But she isn’t. Katherine smiles, and the boy smiles back. And there is no way that anyone with such a bright and sweet and perfect smile could possibly be wicked.

Their eyes meet for only an instant before the boy skips lightly around her and – _flies!_ – away down the hall, but in that instant, Katherine is somehow sure that she’s found a friend.

She looks back only once before she follows the boy, knowing how her uncle will worry if he finds out, but once he gets absorbed in his work he wouldn’t notice if a bomb went off. And after all, reading about adventures is all very well, but it cannot possibly compare to the thrill of finding yourself in the middle of one.

…

Nightlight doesn’t have time to stop and properly meet the strange girl who is neither Small nor Tall but something all her own. But he likes her smile; it’s bright and brave and just a tiny bit rebellious. And in the instant that their eyes lock, before Nightlight hurries on his way, he knows he’ll see her again.

He just hopes it will be in happier times.

…

Jack makes sure that the woman is comfortable, that her partners aren’t hurt too badly, before he checks to see if the man called Bunny is all right. If Bunny was in the arena, then that means he’s made of tougher stuff than the men in white. They break so much easier.

It takes Jack a moment to figure out where the plug that powers the computer display is. He pulls it out of the wall, there’s a loud _pop_ and a shower of sparks from the last intact screen, and Bunny claws his way out of the wreckage with a growl. His shoulders are smoking, angry scorch marks livid against his bare chest, and the look in his bright green eyes is positively murderous.

“When I catch that sonofabitch -”

“Who _was_ that?” Jack asks. He’s not entirely sure what just happened, but he thinks that finding out who the shadowy stranger is will give him most of the puzzle.

“Pitch Black,” Bunny spits. Actually _spits_. “That crazy drongo was supposed ta be a Guardian, but he went rogue. Now he’s got it in for the project and everyone in on it.” He gives himself a shake, flexing his fingers and running a hand through his frazzled hair (fur? Jack’s still not quite sure). “We beat ‘im down ages ago, got ‘im locked up. He shouldn’t be back.”

Jack nods. It makes sense. Something about the explanation bothers him, though, and it takes him a moment to pin it down.

“Why?” he asks, at last. “Why’d he do it?”

Bunny shrugs. He’s sniffing at the air, paying special attention to the place where Pitch (hadn’t he said that wasn’t his name?) disappeared into the dark. “Who knows?” He scratches absently at one of the scorch marks on his shoulder. “More importantly, who cares? He’s trying to kill us, that’s all I need ta know.”

This makes sense too, and Jack nods. Even though, if Pitch had been trying to kill them, wouldn’t he have _done_ it, rather than asking Jack for his name, and running away just when he’d got Bunny down for the count? Even the man in white who’d been on the floor when Jack and Bunny had arrived is still breathing –

Jack’s train of thought is abruptly interrupted by a moan from his right, reminding him that there are three others here with them. He spins around, to see the woman sitting up, gingerly touching the back of her head and wincing. When she sees Jack and Bunny, she lets out a high-pitched squeak of fright, shuffling backwards. “Security’s on their way,” she warns them, only the faintest quaver in her voice belying its fierceness.

“Hey, it’s okay, you’re safe now. We’re not gonna hurt you,” Jack hurriedly reassures her.

“What _happened_ here?” Bunny demands, and the woman wraps her arms around herself.

“That – he just appeared out of nowhere and smacked Dr. Whittaker halfway across the room when he set off the alarm. And then he tried to make us let him into the subject files. The computer exploded when he tried to force his way in and set off the security device, and then you two showed up.”She’s shivering a little, and Jack moves to drape his good arm around her comfortingly, before realizing that he’ll only make her cold.

Bunny shakes his head. “Subject files? What does Pitch want with those?”

“He did say something about ‘people to rescue’,” Jack says, and the woman pipes up.

“Oh! When he couldn’t get into the files, he wanted to know where he could find someone named Seraphina Pitchiner.”

The name means nothing to Jack. Bunny echoes his sentiments. “Don’t know the sheila.” A smug grin paints itself across his face. “But I _do_ know where Pitch is going next.”


	8. Chapter 8

Kozmotis stumbles out into the cell block and drops abruptly to his knees, legs collapsing under his own weight. All this shadow-travel is finally taking its toll. He’s been running on fumes, powering through these little battles on nothing but adrenaline and sheer willpower, and now it’s catching up to him.

He slumps heavily against the wall, hissing at the sudden bite of pain in his half-healed shoulder, and tries not to think about the cameras that must have seen his arrival, the alarms that have sent the entire facility into lockdown, the Guardians he doesn’t doubt are on his tail. If he doesn’t rest a moment now, he won’t be able to get back up and keep pushing on when he absolutely has to.

Even if he could ignore all that, though, he couldn’t block out the sounds.

It’s been a long time since he was last held in the lower-security levels, and he’s forgotten how noisy they could get. The inhuman noises are the easiest to ignore, the yaps and growls and hisses and roars and flaps of wings. It’s the whimpers and the sobs and the whispers and the screams that drill right into his head, insisting on being heard. If this is how the researchers feel, it’s no wonder that so many of the subjects end up muted.

Finally, Kozmotis pushes himself to his feet, leaning against the wall until he’s sure his legs will support him. He’s not yet back to full strength, but he doubts that will happen until he gets eight solid hours of sleep and a good meal, and that’s unlikely to be anywhere in his near future. He’ll just have to make the best of it. Besides, the fear that permeates this entire level is bracing, invigorating even. And he needs to get moving. He doesn’t know exactly where on this level he’ll find the control room.

And the Guardians will be catching up.

…

“You’re a Guardian?”

Bunny shrugs. “Yeah. What’s it to you?”

Jack shakes his head, laughs. “Oh, nothing, just that they put _me_ into the ring with a _Guardian_. No big deal.” He waves towards the wall of screens showing the arena from different angles, the snow that’s slowly beginning to melt. “It’s not like you’re the biggest badasses in the project, or anything.” If there’s an edge of bitterness in his voice then he’s just as surprised as anyone else to hear it there.

“It was supposed to be the final trial,” the woman in the white coat says, and Jack blinks at her. Her voice is still small and high and defiant, but she’s uncurling a little, apparently deciding to trust them. Her mismatched eyes flick from Bunny back to Jack, and she gives him a tentative smile. “To determine whether you were a good candidate for further training.”

“Further - ?” It hits Jack even as he starts to ask. “What – no, no way, I’m not Guardian material.” He has no idea why the idea leaves such a sour taste on his tongue. Anyone else would be jumping at the chance, he’s sure. He should be too. Isn’t that why he’s here?

_Is_ that why he’s here?

Why _is_ he here?

“My thoughts exactly,” Bunny says, snapping Jack out of his musings. “Which is why you’re staying _here_ while I go get the others.”

Jack rubs the back of his neck, presses his lips together in a mockery of deep thought. “What, and miss all the fun? Yeah, I don’t think so, Cottontail.”

“ _What_ did you just call me?”

Jack laughs again, and skips backwards, out of reach. “Oh, lighten up, it was just a joke.”

“Very funny,” Bunny growls. “See, this is why you’d never make it as a Guardian. If you can’t be serious for five seconds in the middle of an attack -”

Jack cuts him off with a sweeping gesture towards the quiet (if thoroughly trashed) control room. His arm twinges faintly, and he reminds himself that while the bones might be knitting at their proper rate, it’s still going to be tender for a few more hours. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize we were still under attack.”

Bunny bares his teeth, leaning in uncomfortably close, and Jack leans away, refusing to give any more ground. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this thing you just wandered into is a hell of a lot bigger than one little explosion.”

He doesn’t give Jack a chance to retort, reaching out with one clawed hand and – it looks like nothing so much as tearing through the air like a cheap painted backdrop, revealing another room on the other side. “I’m only saying this once. _Stay. Put_ ,” he warns Jack, before stepping through the tear.

As if someone telling him what to do was ever going to change Jack’s mind.

…

It’s at the junction of two hallways, offices and white walls giving way to cold steel and clinical spotlessness, that Katherine realizes she’s well and truly lost.

She’s never been this far into the facility before, always sticking to the office block where her uncle does his work, shuttling back and forth between his office and his lab. She takes a moment to reflect that she doesn’t actually know what it is that goes on in the rest of this sprawling, secretive building, what her uncle’s painstakingly-crafted nanobots are actually used for. He’s assured her that it’s something to do with defense, that the project itself is very dangerous and not something that she would enjoy learning about.

She’s always wondered about that. After all, there is very little that she doesn’t enjoy learning about (although she’s always liked stories best).

And now, it seems, Katherine will get her chance to see what exactly it is that she’s been kept from finding out.

Up ahead, the glowing boy has stopped in his tracks, and Katherine ducks into an empty office to avoid being seen. She’s quite sure, somehow, that the mysterious boy wouldn’t mind her presence, but he might be angry about being followed without having been asked, or worse, he might be as overprotective as her uncle. Katherine really would not like to be sent back to sit around and read about programming when there’s an adventure in progress right under her own nose.

She peers around the doorframe, and sees him staring intently at a patch of shadow cast against one wall. Katherine squints, trying to figure out what is so important about it. It might be a little darker than the others around it, but that’s all that she can see.

And then the boy draws a dagger that catches his light like a funnel, lighting up the halls with such sudden fierce brightness that Katherine has to blink furiously to clear away the afterimages. When her vision returns, she sees that he’s prodding at the shadows with the dagger, and they’re _moving_ in response, not like ordinary shadows but more like something with far too many tentacles. The light only seems to make them blacker as they recoil and scurry away down the hall, towards the experimental halls.

The boy smiles triumphantly and sheathes the dagger again, shaking his head a little. Katherine wonders if it wouldn’t be more use to him if he affixed it to a staff of sorts, and then realizes that he’s moving again, flitting down the hall after the escaping shadows.

There’s nothing to do but follow him.


	9. Chapter 9

Jack tumbles out through the rapidly-closing portal and lands flat on his back on an unfamiliar floor, staring up at a row of fluorescent lights. Before he can right himself, there’s a knee pressed into his stomach and a blade against his throat. Jack freezes – both figuratively and literally, a fine film of frost spiraling out from under his outstretched hands – and tries not to swallow.

“What is this?” the dark-haired man pinning Jack down asks, and despite the seriousness in his voice, there’s a sparkle of mirth in the depths of his bright blue eyes. “Bunny, I am thinking you have follower.”

“What?”

There’s a whir, and an iridescent blur overhead that resolves itself into the shape of a woman, wrapped in a suit of mail that shimmers like a hummingbird’s chest. The whirring is coming from her wings, wings that are barely visible against the light and that slice through the air like knives. “Who are you? Why are you here? What -”

“Tooth! Enough with questions, give boy time to answer, da?”

“Frost?”

The winged woman backs away, letting Bunny in to lean intimidatingly over Jack’s head. “Thought I told you to stay put,” he grumbles, sounding exasperated. Jack offers a sheepish grin in return.

“Just couldn’t stay away.” He bats his lashes for effect, wringing a disgusted noise out of Bunny and a laugh from the other dark-haired man, who withdraws the sabre from Jack’s throat.

“Wait, wait. You two know each other?” the winged woman asks, swerving in close to Bunny with a suspicious frown down at Jack. “Bunny, who -”

“Frost. Jack Frost,” Jack answers, pushing himself up off the floor. The others tense, and he raises both hands, palms out, in the universal gesture of harmlessness. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“What are you doing here?” the woman called Tooth demands. Now that she’s not in quite so constant motion and Jack can get a closer look, it looks less like she’s wearing armour and more like its overlapping scales are part of her slender body, especially around the edges of her face where they blend into sleek, black hair. That suspicion is confirmed when the scales all flare as she darts forward, peering intently at his face, and suddenly she is all points and edges. “How did you find us? What do you want?”

“I followed Bunny? This Pitch guy showed up and trashed the control room in the middle of my Guardianship trial. Maybe I want a little payback.” And perhaps he wants to know _why_ , what Pitch is looking for and why he didn’t try to hurt Jack and why he says that Pitch is not his name, but somehow Jack doesn’t think that these are reasons that will endear him to Tooth.

“Pitch Black?” the dark-haired man asks, stroking his short beard thoughtfully, and a scowl darkens Tooth’s heart-shaped face. “But Pitch is gone. We made very sure of that.” By the way he hefts his sabre, Jack doesn’t doubt it.

“Well, he’s back. And picking up where he left off, if what just went down’s any indication.” Bunny gingerly rests a hand on Tooth’s shoulder, and she unwinds slightly, her scales settling back into place.

“How do we know boy is not working with Pitch?” the bearded man asks, and Bunny frowns.

“You know what, North -” He stops, and give Jack a searching look that makes the pit of Jack’s stomach feel like it’s just dropping down to his toes. “We don’t.”

“What? I didn’t even know the guy existed until ten minutes ago!”

Tooth bristles slightly at Jack’s protest, but she doesn’t say anything to him. Instead, she turns to someone behind Jack. “What can you see, Sandy? Is he on the level?”

Jack turns, to see the fourth Guardian shaking himself as though he’s just woken from a deep sleep. He’s unremarkable, a smallish, soft-looking figure with wild blonde hair and a dreamy expression. The only sign that he’s anything but ordinary is the bright, buttery gold of his irises.

That gold swirls out to fill the universe and then just as quickly vanishes, leaving Jack feeling like he’s just been hit with a full night’s sleep travelling at a few thousand miles an hour, a gap in memory and a feeling of lost time that nags like a toothache in his brain. The man called Sandy nods, flashing two thumbs up and a huge grin in Jack’s direction.

Tooth relaxes with a sigh, and the bearded man who Bunny’d called North sheathes his sabre, clapping Jack heartily on the back. It’s all Jack can do not to be knocked right off his feet. “If Sandy says you are friend, then friend you are. Welcome, Frost, to Guardians!”

“Now wait a minute, North, just because he’s not with Pitch doesn’t mean he’s a Guardian,” Bunny protests, and North draws himself up, his warm smile turning steely.

“Frost. It was Guardianship trial Pitch interrupted, da?”

It takes Jack a moment to realise that North is talking to him. “Well, yeah, but I’m not -” Jack starts, but North cuts him off with a wave of one hand.

“There. You see? Frost is Guardian.”

“Wait, no, I don’t want -” Jack tries again. This time, it’s not North but Tooth who cuts him off.

“Boys, I understand that this is very important but maybe right now isn’t the best time? We don’t know where Pitch is or what he’s planning -”

“Nyet, is not true. We know he is planning blowing up of facilities.”

“And he’s looking for someone,” Bunny finishes. “Which means -”

“He’s down in the containment levels?” Tooth’s delicate hands ball into fists. “Then that’s where we’re going.”

…

This computer seems, at least, less inclined to explode at a wrongly-guessed password. Unfortunately, this does not make it any more forthcoming than the last computer Kozmotis tried to access. He snarls in frustration at the AI’s melodious female voice impassively telling him that he doesn’t have the clearance to access subject information. For the twelfth time. What was Einstein’s definition of insanity, again?

Perhaps it’s time to try something new.

He leans against the array of controls that surrounds the keyboard and shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath. And he listens.

The cacophony outside the tiny box of the control room is nothing to the symphony of terrified minds. They run from the sharp and urgent violin-stings of those newly-captured, still hopeful and so unknowing, to the dark slow cello-swell of those dreading the arrival of the next experiment. A whole host of smaller anxieties play a bright and bitter counterpoint, lives left behind, bodies wrenched out of familiarity, whether this pain will stop or that lover will worry or if someone is taking care of their pet. All the little worries that the mind latches onto when it can’t quite comprehend the full horror of reality.

Kozmotis has to remind himself to take another breath.

It’s always overwhelming, opening himself up like this, and as always there’s the little spark of horror at how easy it is to get lost in the rush and the beauty of all that terror, the faint flicker of uncertainty that he’ll be able to shove it all to the back of his mind again. He always has before, but there’s always the possibility that this will be the time that he can’t, that he will lose himself in the heady feeling and never find his way out again.

There isn’t time for this now, though. He shoves his own fears to the side and sifts through the discordant strains, searching for a familiar note. Just a hint of sweetness, a terror that is all the deeper and more precipitous for the mask of reassurance it wears.

_But what if he_ doesn’t _come find me?_

Kozmotis’ eyes snap open.

It’s faint, almost buried under the chorus ringing through the hall, but it’s _there_. And it’s coming from a cell at the end of the hall. He starts forward, before remembering that he has no way in. He’s been on both sides of those cell doors, and even at his strongest he’s never been able to break them down. And right now, he might be able to get himself in and out through darkness, but definitely not anyone else.

He swallows down a curse when the shadows around the control room shiver and convulse with warning. Someone’s tripped the wards; he’s about to have company. It’s too damn soon, all he needs is a little more time –

He spots the bright red button marked ‘Emergency Release’, sitting innocently in the middle of the control panel, at the same instant that the door bursts open.


	10. Chapter 10

Katherine hears it before she can see it. There’s a clamour, a commotion, a howl of voices echoing down the halls. It’s a haunting, painful sound that stops her in her tracks.

“What -” she exclaims, before clapping a hand over her mouth. It’s too late though; the damage is done. The spectral boy pulls up short in midair, whirling around to face her. Katherine can’t read anything but wary surprise on his face.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have…” she starts, but trails off when the boy’s face splits into a bright, broad grin. Katherine exhales a long sigh of relief when he waves her over, and gladly hurries up to join him at the end of the hall.

“Hello, I’m Katherine,” she says, feeling a little silly. She thrusts out a hand, and feels far sillier when the boy only cocks his head to one side and looks at it quizzically. His apparent confusion doesn’t last long, though, before he smiles and takes her hand in both of his.

“Nightlight,” he says, and his voice is like wind chimes on a clear night, a baby’s first delighted laugh, moonlight made sound. Katherine’s sure her cheeks are cherry-red.

“That’s your name?” she asks, and he nods, releasing her hand. She tucks it quickly behind her back, turning to the end of the hall to conceal the small and secret smile that threatens to become a large and open one.

The hall ends in a huge metal door, sealed with a wheel like a vault. The display on a keypad beside the door blinks red. It seems darker here, and it isn’t until the boy frowns at a shadow on the wall and it curls away under the door that Katherine realizes she isn’t just imagining it.

The noises are coming from the other side of the door.

 “What _is_ this place?” she asks, in a hushed voice. Somehow, it seems very important to whisper.

The boy looks at her with a serious expression, one that seems strange on his usually lively, laughing face.

“Are we going in there?”

The boy – Nightlight – nods again, before flitting up to the wheel sealing the door shut. It refuses to turn, despite his best efforts.

“Wait,” Katherine says, hurrying over to the keypad. She punches in her uncle’s access code, the one she technically shouldn’t know. The display flashes green, and the wheel turns, the whole door swinging open in slow, ominous silence.

The hall on the other side is cinderblock and concrete, lined with doors only slightly less imposing than the one that had blocked it off. More halls branch off every few feet, and Katherine has no doubt that it would be all too easy to get lost in the labyrinth and never find her way out again.

“It looks like a _prison_ ,” she whispers, and Nightlight makes a face. He looks quickly from left to right, then back over his shoulder, before darting forwards into the maze. The shadows curl away from him, just as they did in the hall before, and he waves cheerily for Katherine to follow him before turning around a corner and out of sight. His glow is visible for a few moments more before it, too, vanishes.

Katherine swallows hard, remembering something she thinks she read once: the thing about adventures is that you never know how big they’re going to be until you’re right in the middle of one.

She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and hurries after Nightlight.

…

_Help him_ , his Man of Moon has said. It would be far less difficult, Nightlight reflects, if he knew what the Dark One was trying to _do_.

He considers helping to fight off the four who beset the Dark One, but that plan he quickly dismisses. This is not the kind of help he is best suited to, and besides, he rather likes all four of them. Nightlight doesn’t recognize the pale boy who has joined the Guardians, but he, too, looks like fun. Fighting against them, on the other hand, would _not_ be.

His problem is solved when he notices the button that the Dark One keeps turning back to. Now, _there_ is something that Nightlight can help with.

He slips into the small and hotly-contested room as little more than a beam of blue light and a laugh that goes unheard over the shouts, ringing in the air.

…

It’s once she goes around the first bend that Katherine hears the shouts, and the ringing crash of metal.

Katherine gets so caught up in trying to make out what’s being said through the cacophony coming from the cells that she nearly trips over something large and soft and bulky. She looks down, and claps both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out when she realizes that it’s a body. It’s dressed in the uniform of one of the guards who work at the compound, and she wonders for a second whether it’s anyone she knows. In the end, she can’t bring herself to look, and runs after Nightlight’s retreating glow instead.

This doesn’t seem like it’s going to be quite the adventure she’d been hoping for.

“Don’t you _dare_ open those doors!”

The voice that shouts from around the next corner is sweet and feminine, but Katherine thinks it would be a very big mistake to assume the speaker is weak because of this.

“We don’t have to be enemies,” another voice says, a note of pleading in its dark and faintly-accented voice.

“Think _you_ were the one who made us enemies when you tried to blow us all to hell the _first_ time,” a third voice interjects. Katherine can’t help but think that this is how an angry wolverine might sound, if it could speak.

She edges around the corner, peering cautiously around before she ventures out into the hall. The body she tripped over earlier floats back to the top of her mind, and she shudders.

A door is hanging open at the end of the hall, not one of the massive cell doors but a far more ordinary-looking one. A group of people are clustered around it, people like nothing Katherine has ever seen in her waking hours. And inside the room -

The darkness is so thick that it can’t possibly be natural. Shadows writhe and curl at the edges like a living thing trying to escape, held at bay by the man with two swords and a coat the colour of blood, and the boy who looks as though something’s leached all the colour out of him. Within the room, a faint golden glow curls through the air and glints off of the wings of the woman in bright armour and the claws of the darker man as they tear through shadows like paper.

“ _Fine_ ,” the second voice hisses out of the impossible dark. “I suppose it was too much to hope that someone might actually _listen_ for once.”

The pale boy stiffens at that, taking one small step backwards. He moves lightly, as though he has only a passing acquaintance with gravity, and Katherine suddenly wonders where her lighter-than-air boy has gone to. She hasn’t seen so much as the faintest glimmer of Nightlight’s glow in what feels like far too long.

“But if it’s an enemy you want,” the voice in the dark continues, and there’s an edge to it that has Katherine looking around for anything that might serve as a weapon, “then it’s an enemy you’ll get.”

There’s a shout, from five voices at once, and a burst of white light, just as a siren howls into life directly above Katherine’s head. She claps both her hands over her ears, screwing her eyes shut against the lights that flash brilliant red in time with the siren’s shrieks.

That’s why she doesn’t notice until it’s almost too late that the doors lining the hall are all sliding open.

…

Kozmotis sidesteps out of the way of one of the hummingbird’s razor-edged wings, falling into range of the rabbit’s claws and having to leave his right side unguarded in order to throw up a hasty shadow-shield. He can’t keep this up, he knows; his chances of escape are dwindling with each second that this fight goes on. And what’s worse, it’s drawing him away from the emergency release and what may be his best chance at rescuing his daughter. He’s under no illusions that he’ll ever get another opportunity like this one, not now they know what he’s after.

And then, there’s a flash of blinding white light.

The Guardians are all unprepared; they’ve expected him to attack with shadows, and they all recoil at the sudden brightness. It’s only for an instant, but it’s long enough for Kozmotis to recognize a figure in the middle of the glow, that of the slight, spectral boy who he thought he’d left behind him along with the enigmatic Mr. Moon. He tenses, prepared for another painful encounter with that damnable diamond dagger, but instead, the boy pauses in front of the control panel, and with a last burst of radiance, scatters apart into so many moonbeams.

Kozmotis doesn’t even have time to be puzzled before the wail of a siren blares out of speakers around the room. The bird looks wildly around, and the rabbit flings up both arms to cover his ears. It takes a moment for Kozmotis to realise what else has changed. The cacophony from the cells has ceased completely. Apart from the shrieking siren, all is dead silent.

And all along the hall, the doors are sliding ponderously open.

For a split second, no one and nothing moves. Then, as though a spell has broken, the prisoners flood out into the hall. It’s chaos, gloriously busy, noisy, crowded chaos, and to make it even better, a few of the subjects seem to harbour a grudge against the Guardians. Kozmotis ducks a flare of brilliant purple light that misses the hummingbird by inches, burning a sizzling hole into the wall behind her, and slips away into the crowd.

At least, that’s his plan. Its execution is hampered slightly by the sudden appearance of something knife-sharp and icy, pressed into his lower back. It wouldn’t kill him if the wielder decided to drive the blade – if a blade is what it is – forward, but he would be seriously inconvenienced.

Kozmotis freezes in place. “I see you’ve chosen a side.”

The voice from behind him is low and full of threat, which Kozmotis doesn’t doubt the boy could make good on. The slight note of uncertainty is new, however. “Don’t move.”

“Believe me, I have no intention of doing so.”

“Why are you doing this?” Jack demands, and Kozmotis can’t help but be impressed.  The Guardians don’t ask _why_. They don’t question their enemies’ motives. They don’t question their orders. They don’t question _anything_. They’re conditioned not to. Who _is_ this boy? “What do you want?”

“I could ask the same of you,” Kozmotis answers softly. “What is it that you want, Jack?”

The point held to his back wavers, ever so slightly. “I – I don’t -”

“Jack!”

It’s a little girl’s voice, high and scared and excited and breathless and _not Sera’s_. Kozmotis barely notices the clatter as Jack drops whatever weapon he’d been holding through the sudden rush of despair that threatens to overwhelm him. Her fear is so familiar, even as it disappears rapidly under happiness and relief. Her protector is here, he’d come for her after all.

_Not Seraphina_.

“What -” There’s an edge of panic to Jack’s voice, and Kozmotis risks turning around. The boy seems to have forgotten him completely, searching the crowd for any sign of the voice’s owner.

“Jack!” She’s farther away, now, still obscured by the crowd.

“No, wait!” Jack takes to the air without so much as a glance behind him, and Kozmotis forcibly quells his curiosity. It doesn’t matter. Seraphina isn’t here. What matters right now is getting away, out of immediate danger, so that he can _think_. So that he can find her.

He turns, with purpose, and finds himself looking down into the sweet, rather plump face of the quietest, most restrained, and quite probably most dangerous of the Guardians.

“Sandy,” Kozmotis breathes, taking an involuntary step back. He looks up, away, but it’s too late; he’s already met the smaller man’s eyes. Gold fills the edges of his vision, his limbs turning sluggish, the shadows slipping out of his grasp.

He could swear he hears a voice, on the very edge of consciousness, whispering _sweet dreams,_ before everything goes dark.


	11. Chapter 11

Kozmotis wakes up.

For a second, he doesn’t know where he is, before the confused impression of fighting and shouting and running out of time fades, leaving him alone, in his bedroom, in the dark. He groans, and presses a hand over his eyes. No matter what he does, the dreams keep coming. They’re never the same twice, but they’re _always_ the same; desert heat, the familiar weight of fatigues and a pack on his back, the familiar weight of a gun in his hands. Screams. Running. Gunfire. In other words, the usual. Seraphina wants him to visit a therapist, but what would he say? That he has _nightmares_? After everything, he thinks he’s pretty lucky he’s escaped with such trivial damage.

And perhaps it’s selfish, but part of him doesn’t want to give up what sometimes feels like the last proof that it was all real, that he hadn’t imagined it. Medals and commendations are all very well, but they belong to this bright, cheerful, aggressively _normal_ world where someone getting shot is a tragedy, rather than part of the daily routine.

There’s a faint noise from somewhere on the other side of his bedroom door, and the thought of Seraphina catches in his mind, followed by a bloom of dark dread like ink blown through water. She’s _fine_ , he knows she is, but he still throws back the covers and pads across the room in his bare feet. He’ll feel better if he checks on her. He’ll sleep better knowing she’s sleeping well. That’s all.

He opens the door into black nothingness.

For a moment, he can’t understand what he’s seeing. He steps forward, expecting to feel the softness of the hall carpet underfoot, but instead his feet touch cold laminate flooring.  He freezes in place, trying to undo the suspicion that trickles uncomfortably in, but it’s far too late. The dam bursts, the memories flood back, and the house around him dissolves into darkness.

The shadows that surround him whisper and snicker but they won’t answer his calls, won’t obey his commands no matter what he tries. There’s a sudden shifting sound from behind him, and Kozmotis spins, trying to make out anything against the all-consuming dark. He can’t see anything, and the soft noises that follow are impossible to place. Out of desperation, he listens closely for any echo of fear, any hint of worry or anxiety or discomfort, but gets…nothing. Not just the nothing of having no one around, either. It’s as though his strange sixth sense has been abruptly muffled, cut off as though it never were, and for reasons he can’t quite explain, this is almost more frightening than everything else put together.

He tries one more time to bend the shadows to his will, and this time, he gets a response. Not, however, the one he was looking for. A low, rich, sinister laugh echoes out of the surrounding blackness, seemingly without a source, and a voice says, “My, my, you really have let yourself go native, haven’t you, General?”

…

It’s chaos.

Katherine just manages to avoid getting her head taken off by something winged and screaming, by nearly running full-tilt into a figure with a boar’s head and serious anger management issues. She slides sideways, out of the way of the boar-minotaur, and slams bodily into someone taller than her by at least three feet, someone silvery-gray as willow bark. They look down at her, and their eyes are _on fire_.

Katherine bites her bottom lip, knowing that it would be both rude and dangerous to scream, no matter how much she wants to. She takes two slow steps backwards, and someone, running past, knocks into her, sending her spinning nearly off her feet.

There are people, everywhere, even if it seems to be stretching the definition of ‘people’ to apply it to some of the figures filling these halls. Most of them seem as panicked as she does, and a few fights have broken out, fights marked by bursts of light and howls like a whole book of fairy tales’ worth of wolves. Katherine looks around, above and below, but she can see no sign of her odd, glowing boy in the crush.

She turns back towards the way she came, hoping to follow the general direction of the crowd and find her way back to the door, but it isn’t long before she finds her passage blocked. No one is moving forward, and in fact quite a lot of people seem to be hurrying back deeper into the maze of hallways and cells. Katherine, being rather small and slight, has little trouble slipping through the crowd against the stream – at first. As she draws nearer the door, however, the shouts and the sirens and the sound of pounding feet grow louder and louder, until she turns the corner into the main hallway and stops, frozen, in her tracks.

It’s hard to tell, through the press of bodies in the way, but she’s certain that she sees flashes of familiar faces, familiar blue uniforms, entirely unfamiliar and fearsome-looking weaponry. The alarms have done their job, drawing a veritable army of guards down to the tangle of halls and the chaos within. Katherine thinks she catches a glimpse of Sascha, staring down a winged figure darting towards her with its talons outstretched, before the crowd presses in around her again and the line of guards vanishes from view.

This is not good. This is, in fact, about as bad as it can get. Suddenly, her uncle’s ridiculous worries don’t seem quite so ridiculous anymore.

Katherine bites her lip and slips back around the corner, into the hallway she came from. She steps on someone’s toe – or possibly hoof – and bites back a yelp, calling an apology back over her shoulder instead as she hurries back deeper into the maze. Where on earth has Nightlight gone to? What _has_ she stumbled into? And more importantly, how can she stumble _out_ again?

“Jack!”

The sound of a little girl’s voice cuts through the hubbub like a knife. Katherine’s not quite sure why this one shout stands out above all the rest. Perhaps it’s the pitch, clear and high against a backdrop of growls and thundering megaphone proclamations as the guards try to restore order. Perhaps it’s the desperation etched into that one-syllable name. Perhaps it’s only the fact that the screaming girl is passing by mere feet away.

Whatever the reason, the cry catches Katherine’s attention, and because of it, she notices the little knot of children hurrying down the hall across from her. None of them can be older than ten, and there’s one little blonde girl who must only be about three or four. The fairy wings that she wears, wings that Katherine had taken at first for a costume of some sort, leave a wave of glitter in the air when they flutter and lift the girl ever so slightly off of her feet.

As soon as Katherine sees it, she realizes that almost none of them are untouched, and her stomach twists. It only lasts for a second, but it leaves her feeling like the wind’s been knocked out of her nonetheless. The dark-haired boy who seems to be the leader is glowing, not like Nightlight’s faint, constant moonbeam-brightness, but with flaring golden light that pulses from his eyes seemingly at random. It leaves trails in the air that Katherine thinks at first are afterimages, and forms a sparking halo around each of his fists. The girl at his side turns slightly, and reveals a spiral horn protruding from the very centre of her forehead, both whimsical and wickedly sharp.

She only sees their faces in bits and pieces, but she recognizes the girl who’d screamed in an instant. Her eyes are wide, stark terror written into the lines of her face, and where the others only look back in wary apprehension, her eyes are turned to the hallway behind her in hopeful anticipation.

Katherine isn’t quite sure why she follows them.

…

Nightlight watches the Dark One fall, collapsing into an ungraceful heap, and thinks that perhaps he ought not to meet the smallish, roundish Tall One’s eyes.

It’s far harder to cross swords with someone when meeting their gaze will quickly put an end to any battle, but Nightlight’s task is made easier by the fact that the Tall One (who hardly deserves the title, as he only comes up about to Nightlight’s chin) does not actually have a sword to cross. Nightlight is thankful, too, that the small Tall One does not expect him.

The smallish Tall One kneels down, looking over the Dark One, and the oddest feeling comes over Nightlight. It’s not quite sadness, but he isn’t glad to see the Dark One lying defeated and helpless, as he’d thought he might be. It almost comes as a relief to remember what his Man of Moon has asked of him, and to step in when the smallish Tall One reaches out for the Dark One.

Nightlight pours all of his strength and his most brilliant glow into the crystal dagger for the merest sliver of a second, sending out a single blinding flare that leaves the smallish Tall One blinking those dangerous eyes shut. In the brief respite this buys him, Nightlight tries unsuccessfully to shake the Dark One back to wakefulness. He gets only the faintest of moans in response. Whatever dream has fallen on the Dark One must be a deep one.

Nightlight huffs out a breath, blowing a single snowy curl from his face, and lifts the Dark One in a quick, measured movement. He slings the tall figure across his shoulders, just as he’d done when his Man of Moon had bid him bring the Dark One back, heedless of trailing limbs or bumped heads. Speed is more important.

In another flash, they are both gone.


	12. Chapter 12

Nightlight nearly falls out of the air when he spots a head of auburn hair, a small white face with a look of worry, bobbing amongst the sea of unfamiliar faces. _Katherine!_ He’d almost forgotten she’d followed him, had thought she must have turned back when she saw the fighting. Of course she hadn’t, he thinks. No one with so bright and brave a smile would ever run from something that frightened her, not when it was for a friend.

He blinks at that thought, and then decides that yes, Katherine _is_ already his friend. The idea brings a smile to his face, but only for a moment, before it curves down into a thoughtful frown. She hadn’t had any kind of weapon, had she? Katherine is bright, and brave, but she is also still between Small and Tall and what if something harms her? What if she can’t find her way back? After all, she isn’t quite as talented as Nightlight is. What if she gets into a fight? What if -

He hesitates only for a moment, torn between his duty and the one he feels truly needs him. But in the end, there really can be no contest. Nightlight will always, always take care of his Man of Moon, as he knows, dimly, he was charged to long ago, by a Tall man and woman with kind smiles. And his Man of Moon has asked this of him, to follow the Dark One and help him find whatever it is he’s looking for in the computers and locked places and –

The answer is like a flash of blinding light.

Katherine can help! Katherine has the key that opened the lock on these halls, that almost surely will open more. There is no difficult decision to be made at all.

Feeling rather pleased with himself, Nightlight settles the Dark One in a cell, on an untrustworthy-looking metal bed, out of the way and out of sight of the ones set against him, the group of talented Tall Ones with the odd name. Guardians. What, Nightlight wonders, are they guarding?

He looks left, looks right, and then flickers back out to go and fetch Katherine.

…

As the little group draws closer to the doors, Katherine finally gets close enough to hear snippets of their conversation over the general noise. The boy who seems to be the leader, the one whose eyes blaze with golden light, is giving instructions to the others, his boyish voice sounding far more serious than it has any right to.

“- on point, and Cupcake, you and I will be clearing a way through. Pippa, Monty, if anything goes wrong, you two are gonna have to get Emma and Sophie out of the way, okay?”

The tall girl with the reddish hair says something, but it’s lost in a roar and the crackle of something breaking. Katherine winces at the sound even as she tries to slip between two huge, shaggy-coated figures. She’s not quite sure why she’s so intent on getting close to the little group, but something tells her that it’s important, and even if she isn’t exactly an adult herself, she still can hardly bear to see such small children alone in this situation. Besides, there must be something she can do, even if she isn’t quite sure what’s going on. She knows the guards well, after all. Certainly she can help _somehow_.

“It’s not a test,” the boy who must be the leader is saying when Katherine approaches, but the fear on the red-haired girl’s face proves she doesn’t believe him. “This is the chance we’ve been waiting for, okay? We’re getting out of here. _All_ of us.”

Katherine steps forward, about to ask if there is anything she can do or any help she can offer, but she’s interrupted by another boy, one of the twins. His voice is tense, and Katherine would giggle at the earnestness with which he throws around a fighter pilot’s terms if he weren’t so serious. “Jamie, we got a bogey at two o’clock and he’s coming in fast.”

The boy called Jamie’s mouth sets into a line, and the light that fills his eyes pulses once, wildly, so bright that Katherine finds herself blinking away afterimages. “Are you sure we’re the target?”

“Positive.”

Katherine looks up, following his pointing finger, but only catches a glimpse of white, flashing past somewhere near the ceiling. She thinks again of Nightlight, and her heart leaps into her throat.

She isn’t the only one. The girl who had screamed is looking up with eyes wide as dinner plates, and when Jamie says, “Back me up. I’ll take care of this,” she screams again.

“No!”

The boy called Jamie either doesn’t listen or doesn’t hear her, his brilliant light expanding to cocoon him in a radiance that looks both beautiful and deadly before he is airborne, streaking up to meet the oncoming threat. There’s no way he could hear what the dark-haired girl shouts, flinging herself forward out of the grasp of the scrawny blond boy who tries to hold her back. But Katherine does, and the words twist painfully in her heart.

“That’s my brother!”

Katherine turns away from the fight just in time to see the dark-haired girl bolt away from the group, towards the bright flashes and flickers that mark the location of the skirmish. The blond boy scrambles after her, and the red-haired girl waves her hands and a shimmering soap-bubble wall appears out of thin air, falling just short of catching the fugitive but arising just in time for the blond boy to run headlong into it. He’s bounced back, to land at the tall girl’s feet.

Katherine doesn’t see what happens next. She’s already running after the dark-haired girl, bumping into people in her haste. Something slithers across the floor in front of her and she trips, throwing up both arms in a vain attempt to catch herself as she crashes to the floor.

When Katherine picks herself back up, the little girl has stopped running. She’s frozen a scant few feet away, standing stock-still staring up into the barrel of a rifle.

The guard holding the gun looks vaguely familiar to Katherine, but she can’t quite place him. If they’ve met before, it was only once. He looks almost as surprised as the little girl does, but that doesn’t last long. The girl holds out both hands, and the air between them shimmers like the air above hot pavement. The guard shouts, raising the gun more like a bat than a rifle, and Katherine scrambles to her feet and runs forward before she even really knows she’s going to. Everyone else is too far away, they won’t get there in time –

There’s a flare of blinding blue light and an answering blaze of gold, a short sharp shower of hail, and Katherine slides in between the guard and the small girl just in time to intercept his blow. The stock of the rifle smashes into the side of her head with a sick-sounding _crack_ , knocking her clear off her feet, and Katherine has just enough time to think _oh, I’m falling_ before the brilliant starburst of pain catches up with her. She barely notices the dull throb through her arm and her hip when she hits the floor through the bright, sharp lightning-forks of pain just above her ear. She manages to push herself up, blinking furiously to try to clear her vision of the pulses of coloured light that flash in front of her eyes, only to see the small girl scrambling backwards even as the guard raises the gun again, steadying for another swing.  

Before Katherine can make a move or even a sound, something arrests the guard’s hand in midair. He twitches, once, and then looks down slowly at the seeping red stain spreading across the front of his crisp uniform shirt, the inches of sharpened steel that protrude from his chest in the centre of that spreading stain.

A voice, heavy with accent and good-natured joviality, says, “Did your mama never tell you not to be hitting little girls?”

The guard opens his mouth but only a bubble comes out, red-flecked and shimmering for an instant before it pops. Katherine pushes herself to her feet, wincing at the pain in her head, and reaches out to pull the still-frozen girl out of the way as the guard’s body topples silently forward to reveal their rescuer.

She recognizes him only after a long moment as the man in he blood-red coat she saw battling shadows. He’s not so very old, as adults go, though his dark moustache and trim little beard are far thicker than those of most of the young men Katherine knows. He wears a devilish grin and the aforementioned coat, and in each hand brandishes a sabre, one of which is still slick with the guard’s blood. Katherine’s eyes keep darting back to it, some awful gravity in that wash of red pulling her back no matter how much she wants to look away.

The man follows her gaze, and grimaces, kneeling down to wipe the blade clean on the fallen guard’s shirt. “Much better,” he pronounces, tucking the sabres into his belt and straightening up, holding out his right hand. “You are not hurt?”

The dark-haired girl mutely shakes her head no, her eyes wide and frightened. Katherine tries to answer, but all that comes out is a squeak. She clears her throat and tries again. “My head, a bit, but I’m all right.” The questions that crowd to the forefront of her mind all demand to be asked at once, but the ensuing confusion renders her unable to ask anything at all.

The man shakes his head, the alternating flickers of gold and blue light from above casting odd, dancing shadows on his face. “So brave and so small a girl should not be weaponless,” he states confidently, and reaches down for the guard’s dropped gun. Katherine half-expects him to hand it to her, but instead he peers at it intently for a moment, before a thoughtful frown crosses his face and the gun begins to _change_ in his hands. Bits and parts clatter out of the casing, gears and wheels and small metallic things, clicking together into a new and unfamiliar shape.

Even the dark-haired girl seems to forget her distress for a moment, watching the thing in the man’s hands take shape. He glowers at it for a moment, before a look of dawning realization lights his face and he reaches down to pull a small knife from his boot. The clattering, rotating metal contraption latches onto the knife immediately, coiling itself around the hilt and settling into place with a noise almost like a sigh. With a smile and a flourish, the man holds the finished product out to Katherine.

“But – I don’t know how to -” she starts, and the man laughs, deep and hearty and booming.

“No need to know how! This knife, it will defend you. Is not so wise to run into adventures unarmed.”

Katherine isn’t quite sure what to make of this, but it does make a kind of sense. And with the last sentence, she decides to trust him. She reaches out and, with only a moment’s hesitation, takes the knife. The hilt shifts slightly under her hand, settling into a more comfortable shape.

“Emma!”

The voice belongs to the girl called Pippa, and it’s raw with panic. She hurries over, the boy called Monty trailing behind her, and crouches beside the dark-haired girl. “Oh my god, are you okay? We, uh, got stuck in my bubble or we would’ve -”

There’s an especially blazing burst of blue that throws everyone into stark relief, and the air goes cold. That’s all the warning they get before a boy, slim and silver-haired with bruised shadows ringing his eyes and a look of panic on his face, drops seemingly out of thin air and lands, stumbling, beside the bearded man.

“Frost?” the man asks, and the boy smiles painfully, straightening up.

“Jack!” the dark-haired girl called Emma shouts, darting forward. The boy’s smile turns warm, and he turns to face her as she opens her arms, as though asking for a hug.

And that’s when a beam of golden light slams into him with deceptive force and throws him back.

“Jack!” Emma screams again, and starts to run towards him, but Pippa catches her around the waist and pulls her back, wrapping them both in a shimmering force field. “No! Leave him alone!”

There’s a crackling sound, and Katherine looks down to see a fine layer of ice creeping stealthily across the floor towards her, turning red around the body on the floor where it mingles with the pool of blood around him. She steps warily backwards, and another flaring golden strike tears up the floor only feet from where she stands, leaving a long trench in the floor about half as deep as she is tall.

Katherine gasps, taking another step back, and someone grabs her wrist. She whirls, the knife coming up almost of its own accord, but her scream dies on her lips when she sees who it is. “Nightlight!”

He glances over her shoulder, at the bearded man, and raises a finger to his lips. Katherine nods, looking back as well, just in time to see the boy called Jamie, wreathed in light and almost too bright to look at, touch down lightly and hurry over to where Pippa and Emma are crouched. They’re safe, but she has an uneasy feeling that this isn’t the last she’s going to see of them.

Nightlight tugs at her wrist, and Katherine turns and lets him pull her away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand apologies for taking so long with this! I was unexpectedly deprived of internet access, and have only just recovered it. Hopefully it won't go disappearing on me again.


	13. Chapter 13

The world lurches sickeningly, and Kozmotis spins, swinging blindly at nothing. Logically, he knows it’s futile; the voice that even now fills the darkness with mocking laughter, long and loud, is sourceless and directionless, appearing from every shadow at once. There is something familiar about the laughter, he thinks, but he can’t place it, twisted almost unrecognizable as it is with malice and wicked glee.

“What is this? Another trap?” Dimly he remembers gold, and darkness overwhelming his vision, but before that his memory seems strangely fuzzy. “I’m not going back to being a lab rat, if that’s what you want. And neither are those poor people -” he starts, but the voice from the shadows cuts him off, its tone reproaching.

“Are you really still claiming all this violence is in the name of _freedom_? I’m disappointed in you. I would have thought that at least here, in the dark, you’d admit the truth.”

“And what’s that?” Kozmotis asks, warily, still turning as he tries to pinpoint the location of the voice by sound alone. It really has been too long; he’s become too used to his new abilities, relies far too much on them, and the challenge of having just his own body and his own senses to work with would almost be refreshing, if he weren’t somehow certain that he is in terrible danger.

The voice laughs again, this time emerging from the shadows somewhere just behind Kozmotis’ right shoulder. He spins, but no one is there. “That you simply _love_ to hear them scream.”

“You’re wrong,” Kozmotis says, shortly. He shouldn’t have, he knows as soon as the words escape him. It’s simple psychological warfare. Dammit, he’s _better_ than this, he shouldn’t be letting a few words get to him.

“Oh?” the voice purrs, and this time Kozmotis could swear it’s coming from directly in front of him. But that makes no sense, there is _nothing there_ – “Is that why you put so much effort into terrorizing those useless lab assistants? You didn’t _really_ think they knew anything, did you?”

Kozmotis lunges forward, his fists meeting nothing but the slight, dreamlike resistance of shadows, and the voice croons tauntingly into his left ear, “Is that why you tore those guards to shreds?”

He tastes blood, the salty, metallic tang of pain and fear and memory balled into one as he bites almost through his tongue. His swing is wild, sloppy, and he nearly falls forward under his own momentum when, once again, there is nothing there to hit.

“Is this how you solve all of your problems?” the voice asks, and now it sounds bored.

Kozmotis bites back a retort, digging his nails into the palms of his hands as he turns slowly, still searching for any sign of his opponent. “Would you like to _see_ how I solve my problems?” he says, darkly, and the voice’s laugh sounds utterly delighted.

“My, my, my. Crude and impotent threats, now? I must say, I really expected better of you.” The shadows rustle, the darkness _moves_ , swirling around him like a wave. “After you showed _such_ promise in these last few trials, such an admirable lack of compunction when it comes to slaughter – they really have trained you well, haven’t they? Or were you simply always this bloodthirsty?”

“ _Who the hell are you_?” Kozmotis demands. His heart is hammering against his chest, now, and he isn’t sure if he’s grateful for the quicksilver slivers of dread that impale his spine and check his anger, or if he wants to let rage swallow him and feel no more fear.

The only answer he gets is an amused, thoughtful hum. “I could ask you the same question. Look at you! Parading around like a _hero_ , claiming that all you want is to save the poor, innocent victims of the atrocities committed by the _monsters_ who run the program…but you and I know the truth, don’t we, General?”

Kozmotis grits his teeth, refusing to rise to the bait. “What’s the _truth_ , then?”

The darkness is filled, just for a moment, with thousands of pinpricks of light, tiny pairs of eyes blinking open and shut again just as quickly. Only one pair remains, level with his, flashing with an almost-metallic flicker as a smile appears just below them, curving wickedly upwards.

“Why, who is the _real_ monster, of course.”

The darkness begins to melt away, revealing a face, a figure, just as Kozmotis finally realizes why the voice sounds so familiar.

It’s his own.

And the grinning figure that emerges from the dark, that throws back its head and laughs at the look on Kozmotis’ face, is bordered by the gilt frame of a full-length mirror.

He throws himself forward with a scream that is mostly rage, and for once his fists _meet_ something that offers resistance. But it’s no good, even the sharp shattering sounds of glass can’t drown out the laughter, it’s everywhere, it’s in his _head_ –

He bolts awake, to find a knife held in his face.

…

Jack blinks open his eyes, and isn’t met with the familiar sight of the ceiling of his small room, or the overhead lights of the arena. His head throbs in time to the pulsing of the fluorescent lights above him, and something tells him they aren’t really pulsing, but that that, too, is in his head.

“Frost?”

Jack tries to sit up, and promptly decides against it. He waves one arm, waiting for the world to stop spinning. “ ‘M okay.”

“Good.” Tooth’s head fills Jack’s field of vision, fury and worry battling for dominance of her sweet features. “What have you been _doing_? Pitch got away, something’s wrong with Sandy, Bunny’s -” Her voice catches, just slightly, before she resumes her panicky lecture. “Bunny’s hurt, it’s not good, it’s going to take at _least_ an hour to get him back on his feet – and _you_!” She draws back, so quickly that she seems to vanish, and Jack tries again to sit up. “Frost I can understand, he’s _not_ trained as a Guardian, he doesn’t know how we operate but honestly, North, I expected better of you at least! We don’t go to pieces just because a plan goes wrong!”

“There were children in danger,” North says, matter-of-factly, from somewhere outside of Jack’s field of vision. He obviously sees it as a reasonable explanation.

Tooth doesn’t seem to share his viewpoint. “Your _teammates_ were in danger -”

“Forgive me for believing you could take care of yourself. Next time, I will watch over you like porcelain doll.”

“ _North!_ ”

Jack tunes out their argument, testing whether or not he can get up without falling back down instead. It takes a few tries, but eventually he makes it to his feet.

The girl who’d known his name is gone. So is the boy who’d put him out. So, it seems, is everyone else. Jack scans the hall, noticing the occasional stain (not always red) and scorch mark, and wonders just how long he’s been insensible. The painful burns all along his front seem to have healed over, but when he gingerly tests the skin over the places where the light had seared him, it’s still tender. It can’t have been long, then, even if the total absence of anyone else seems to say otherwise.

Maybe there’s still a chance he can catch up with the girl. Maybe she hasn’t gotten too far. Maybe…

“What happened?” Jack asks, and Tooth stops mid-shout.

“Oh no.” Her expression shifts from murderous to concerned in seconds, and she flits over to him, leaving North looking slightly dumbfounded at the abrupt lack of yelling. “Did he take a blow to the head? Do you remember your name? Where you are?” She’s right in his face, staring into his eyes, and Jack tries to back away before he realises she must be checking the size of his pupils.

“Yeah, I remember everything right up to that little girl coming running at me…and then taking that hit.” He winces, and rubs at a tender spot above his heart. “What I _don’t_ know is what happened to everybody. Wasn’t this place practically a war zone?”

Tooth pulls away, her wings fluttering agitatedly, and she turns back to North. “We weren’t prepared. And if _we_ weren’t prepared, you can imagine how much luck the guards had.”

Jack can’t hold back the wince, even though the twinge from his battered ribs instantly makes him regret it. “Ow! And, ow. I’m guessing they didn’t come out on top, then.”

“No.” North pats the sabre hanging at his side as though he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. “And of course they did not think to close doors behind them.” He shakes his head. “Before you ask again what I have been doing, Tooth, Pitch must have fled with other subjects. There is no sign of him in cells or with the dead.”

“You’ve been through them _all_? Already?” Tooth doesn’t give him time to answer. “Nevermind, it doesn’t matter. Bunny’s _hurt -_ ”

“So is Frost,” North says, matter-of-factly, and Jack raises both hands.

“Whoa, no. Don’t drag me into this.”

Tooth spares him only the briefest of glances. “That’s not all. Something’s wrong with Sandy. Really wrong. I know sometimes he gets a bit odd coming out of someone’s head but – North, I think he tried oneiropathy on Pitch.” This last is delivered in a hush, and it takes Jack a moment to work out if she’s actually used a word he doesn’t understand in the slightest or if he just couldn’t hear her.

“He what?” There isn’t so much as a hint of mirth in North’s voice, not a twinkle in his bright eyes. He mutters something that might be a curse. “ _Mussorgsky_ , does he not remember what happened last time he tried to push a dream on Pitch?”

“It’s worse this time.”

“ _Worse_? How can it be _worse_?”

Tooth’s already airborne, starting away down the hall. “Come and see.”

North follows, only glancing back once to see if Jack’s coming with them.

Jack pauses, for a long moment, torn between chasing after the girl who had known his name and following the people – the _Guardians_ – who for some inexplicable reason have decided to take him under their wing. In the end, it’s not really much of a choice. He doesn’t know anything about the girl, where she might have gone, how he might find her again. And he doesn’t really feel like taking another beating. Still, he can’t help but wonder if he’ll ever see her again, ever find out who she is and how she knows him.

For some reason, he hopes he will.


	14. Chapter 14

Nightlight leads Katherine down a hall to one of the rooms, and hovers anxiously by the door, waving her in as he looks cautiously up and down the hall after her. For the first time since she’d met him, a faint tinge of worry colours her thoughts. How does she know that he isn’t going to lead her astray? He’s already led her into one battleground.

Then again, she reflects, someone she thought she should be able to trust had just tried to hurt, maybe kill, both herself and a little girl. Everything is topsy-turvy today, and perhaps if she can’t trust the people she thought she could, then walking into what looks like a trap may be the safest thing she could do.

So Katherine bites her lower lip, adjusts her grip on the knife in her hand so that it sits a little more comfortably, and tiptoes cautiously forward into the dark.

At first, she sees nothing at all. Then her eyes adjust somewhat to the shadows (which are darker here than in any of the cells they passed on the way here, she notices uneasily, and which seem to shift even without a light source to affect them) and she notices something darker, lying heaped on the bed against the corner. As she watches, it shivers, shakes, throws itself up and over and –

Eyes blink open, staring right at her, gold as stars against the dark.

Katherine nearly drops the knife (and she’s almost certain she _has_ dropped it, she certainly isn’t holding it tightly enough for it to stay in her grip, but there it is in her shaking hand, pointing steady and sure at whatever’s looking at her). She has just enough presence of mind to think that if it has eyes, it must be alive, before the eyes wink shut. The patch of deeper dark rises, narrows, looms shapelessly over her for a moment before resolving into the figure of a man. His eyes blink open again, and Katherine notices with a little thrill that the reason the gold seems so bright is because what should be the whites of his eyes are pure jet black. They stand out like two black holes from a pale and pointed face, and when he speaks his teeth look unusually jagged and sharp.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

Katherine opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a squeak. She swallows, and tries again.

“Um. Nightlight brought me here,” she answers, risking a glance back towards the door where the glowing boy stands watch. “Is he – a friend of yours?” she adds, hoping against hope that the answer will be ‘yes’.

The figure – the _man_ – turns and glances dismissively towards the door, a frown darkening his face for an instant, and Katherine realizes that she’s never seen anyone look quite so serious, quite so _scared_. She lowers the knife to her side, with a little difficulty; it doesn’t seem to want to stand down.

“It’s all right,” she says, and tries not to flinch when those eerie eyes fix on her again. “I’m Katherine. Who are you?”

For a moment, the stranger doesn’t speak, doesn’t move, still and silent as a shadow. Then his face splits into a grin, which, for all that it’s full of sharp teeth, seems more sad than frightening.

“What a question to ask,” he mutters, and Katherine is certain somehow that he’s not speaking to her. “Pleased to meet you, Katherine. I’m -” He stops, biting off the words. “My _name_ is Kozmotis.”

“The general?” The moment the words cross her lips Katherine knows it was the wrong thing to say.

“How do you know -”

“My uncle’s a big fan of yours,” she blurts, trying to defuse the sudden tension that fills the air. She could swear the shadows all along the wall are shifting, just slightly, out of the corner of her eye. “He’s always saying that a golden age of warfare ended when you resigned.”

“How flattering.” The frown returns, a deep v creasing Kozmotis’ forehead as he scans the room, pausing just long enough to glare at the doorway and the spillover of light when Nightlight peeks around the door frame. He grins reassuringly, and then ducks back behind the door.

Katherine bites her bottom lip, debating with herself for a moment, but her curiousity, as usual, gets the better of her. Before she can think too much about it, she’s already asking, “What _happened_ to you? How did you end up _here_?” The words _like this_ die on her tongue when Kozmotis turns that glare on her, but she doesn’t back down.

“You don’t know?” He leans a little closer to her, peering intently at her, and Katherine manages with extreme force of will not to take a step backwards. “They didn’t kidnap you? Haven’t tried to turn _you_ into a weapon?”

“Um,” Katherine answers, intelligently. The screams outside have mostly gone silent, but for a moment she could swear they’re still ringing in her head. “I thought it was just about military tech and computer programming. Until today I didn’t even know that there _were_ people being used as – experiments.” She swallows, hard, and has to look away. Her uncle can’t have known about this. He wouldn’t have let this happen. Not to the General Pitchiner he’s talked about so reverently. Not to _children_. He can’t have known. He _can’t_.

Still, she can’t meet Kozmotis’ eyes.

He huffs out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. “If only my daughter had been so lucky.”

“Your -” Any fear of the man before her is suddenly overcome by a wave of pity. Katherine thinks again of the small girl who’d been attacked, and asks, “Is she – was she out there?”

“No. No, she wasn’t.” Katherine can’t quite tell if the expression that flashes across his features is one of regret or relief. “I thought she must be, but – I don’t know where she is.” It sounds like an admission, his voice rough and wounded as though the words have been wrenched out of him against his will. “I don’t know where else to look.”

Katherine shakes her head, and glances back towards the door, an idea of why she has been brought here dawning on her as she meets Nightlight’s eyes in a stolen glance. “You might not,” she says, slowly, as the puzzle pieces fall together, “but I think I do.”

There’s a sharp intake of breath from Kozmotis, and the shadows around the room _jump_. “What do you mean?”

She manages to meet his eyes without flinching, and smiles. “My uncle’s computer has records of every – every experiment.” And he’d told her it was just a lot of data that would be meaningless to her, records and statistics and results that would help him build better nanobots the next time. With everything else that’s turned out to be false, she wouldn’t be surprised if the answers to every question she has now are somewhere in the system. “And I’ve got the pass codes.”

The smile that splits Kozmotis’ face is not entirely innocent. “Now I see why the glowworm brought you here. Would you -”

“You don’t even have to ask.” She sounds braver than she feels, but Katherine squeezes the handle of her knife a little tighter and smiles a little brighter. “Just follow me.”

…

Tooth, it turns out, has exaggerated the severity of Bunny’s injuries ever so slightly. By the time she, Jack, and North return, he’s already on his feet, although the livid gash from his left shoulder down to his right hip still seems to be paining him. As soon as she steps through the door, Tooth is on him, throwing him back onto the metal-framed bed with a fury that Jack had thought she only showed to her enemies.

“What are you _doing_? You know you’re not supposed to be up and walking around, you’ll open it up again or – or jostle your organs out of place and do you even know how much can go wrong if you have your organs in the wrong place, it can cause _permanent_ damage -”

“Tooth! Calm down, sheila, I’m _fine_ ,” Bunny protests, and Tooth bites off a sentence mid-word, shaking her head.

“Just _what_ was so important that you had to risk your own recovery – risk your own _life_ – to get up and wander around?”

“Y’can’t expect me to lie here like a damn potato while the lot of you’re out hunting Pitch!” He casts a pleading look in North’s direction, and when he doesn’t find the sympathy he seeks, tries a different tactic. “Besides, I had ta keep an eye on Sandy.”

Tooth looks like there’s more she wants to say, but North cuts her tirade short. “Sandy? What is problem with -”

“He’s only gotten worse,” Bunny interrupts, ominously, with a wave of his head towards the corner of the room. Tooth frowns, and presses his head back against the flat pillow with a gentleness that seems at odds with her earlier fury.

“Lie _still_ and let it heal, or so help me, I _will_ tie you to the bed.”

“I’d like ta see ya try.”

Jack tunes out their banter, crossing the room with a skip and a jump to where the fourth Guardian is sitting against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest. If Jack didn’t know better, he’d say that Sandy looks somehow…smaller, diminished, and when Sandy looks up and meets Jack’s eyes there is no hint of gold in his gaze.

“Hey,” Jack says, crouching down to put himself closer to eye level with the small man. He’s got no idea what Pitch has done, but it’s got to be something bad. “How’re you doing?”

Sandy scrutinizes Jack for a moment, and then nods once, decisively, bringing up two small hands in a flurry of signs that Jack only faintly recognizes as a language. He tilts his head to the side, watching the intricate passes and gestures, and then glances back up to Sandy, whose face falls when Jack shakes his head. “Sorry, little man, I can’t understand you.”

Sandy scowls, looks around briefly, and then meets Jack’s eyes again. There’s a flash of gold, butter-bright, and _scaredaloneloststrangeshoutsthoughts?runningscreaminghelphelpalone_

For just a second, Sandy looks downright _terrified_.

Once he gets his breath back, Jack manages to dredge up a smile. “That was a little fast for me,” he offers, straightening up. It felt nothing like the first time Sandy’d done – whatever it is that Sandy does. Getting into people’s heads. The first time had been reasonably easy. This – this feels almost like Sandy’s lost control of his power. Or like he never really knew how to control it in the first place.

“He doesn’t remember anything,” Bunny’s saying, when Jack rejoins the Guardians across the room. “Not us, not the facility, not his training, not the first time Pitch threw a fit…nothing. It’s like he’s a completely different person.”

A mental image, an echo of a borrowed memory, flickers across Jack’s thoughts, merging with a little girl’s shout, and before he knows it he’s asking, “What if he is?”

The silence that follows is heavy, three pairs of eyes fixing on Jack, and he swallows nervously. “If he doesn’t remember anything, if Pitch has somehow blanked him out or whatever, wouldn’t that mean he’d go back to whoever he was before he was a Guardian?”

“Frost,” Tooth says, and her face is full of pity as she reaches out to him, “none of us were anyone before we were Guardians.”

That can’t be right. Jack shakes his head, pulling away, back out of the small circle they’ve formed. “No, that’s – that’s not possible, we all had to have been _someone -_ ” His throat feels strangely dry, and he cuts the sentence off abruptly.

“We are Guardians,” North says, and his voice is flat, final. “It is all that we have, all that we are, and all that we ever will be.”

“But not all that we ever _were_ ,” Jack argues. “I’m not – I mean, we’re all grown people here, there had to have been _something_ before the arena, right?” In his mind’s eye, the face of the little girl, so familiar, so damn _familiar_ , grows farther and farther away the longer the silence stretches.

Bunny shakes his head. “Wishful thinking, Frost.”

“No.” Jack isn’t sure he’s even speaking until the words are out, and he hears them almost as though they’re coming from someone else’s mouth. “No, you’re wrong. She knew my name.”

“Everyone will -” Tooth starts, and Jack pulls back, stepping lightly out of the circle towards the door.

“My _real_ name. Not Frost.” Something clenches painfully around his heart. “She said I was her brother.”

Tooth freezes, one hand still outstretched, something like fear on her face. “That’s – that can’t be,” she says, at last. “We don’t have – _families_ , we don’t -”

“How do you know?” Jack asks.

Bunny rises, and this time, Tooth doesn’t try to stop him. Her eyes look vaguely unfocused, and she lowers her arm slowly, as though afraid she’ll shatter if she moves too quickly.

“You know, mate, this is starting to sound awfully familiar,” Bunny growls, and it _is_ a growl, low and rumbling from his chest. Jack takes another step backwards defensively, and Bunny half-turns towards North, not taking his eyes from Jack’s face. “Doesn’t it sound just like that nonsense Pitch was trying to convince us of last time he tried this?”

Jack wants to say something, to defend himself, but his throat seems to have closed.

“Sandy -” North says, sounding uncertain, and Bunny interrupts him with another menacing growl.

“Sandy’s been wrong before.” There’s a faint noise, like tearing silk, and Jack glances down to see that Bunny’s fingers are once again claw-tipped and deadly. “And where was Frost when Pitch disappeared? Was he helping us? No. He was _nowhere_.”

“Hey!” Jack protests, but the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach warns that it’s already too late. Even North is shaking his head, the look on his face turning from disbelief to disappointment with every word. Jack bites his lip, and clenches both of his hands into fists. “Fine. Whatever. If you can’t trust me, then I guess there’s no reason for me to stick around.”

He turns, half-hoping that one of them will call after him, but he hears nothing but the faintest sighs of the wind as he walks through the doorway and away down the hall. And much as he wants to, he doesn’t look back.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once upon a time I said I meant to finish this. Well, guess what! I still do. 
> 
> And even if I end up being wrong and this never gets finished, at least this chapter won't be sitting in limbo on my harddrive, unread, forever.
> 
> If any of you are still around you're the real MVPs, and I can't thank you enough.

Nightlight leads the way back along the maze of corridors that brought him and Katherine here, his bright dagger sheathed so that Kozmotis' shadows can keep them hidden from the eyes of the few guards they pass. Most of the guards are in too much of a hurry to notice anything out of the ordinary, running towards the distant crashes and screams back in the direction leading away from the office block, or Katherine feels sure they would have noticed a large patch of oddly deep shadow with apparently nothing to cast it. 

Thankfully, the guards thin out the farther they go into the office halls, with their grey carpet and wood trim and familiar hum of fluorescents and computers. By the time Katherine, Nightlight, and Kozmotis arrive at Katherine's uncle's office, the halls are deserted, and eerily silent save for the intermittent clanging of an alarm.

Katherine opens the office door first, just in case, but the office is as deserted as the hallways around it. She waves the other two inside, slipping into her uncle's oversized computer chair and depositing her knife on the desk beside the keyboard before typing his password into the lock screen. Nightlight turns over a few books from the stacks around them, looking at them like he's never seen one before, while Kozmotis hovers over Katherine's shoulder, watching intently as she clicks around in her uncle's files.

"There's a database," she says, wondering where it would be stored even as she says it. "He's talked about it, it's the same one all the scientists record their information in, it should be -" She catches sight of an icon of an open book on the desktop and laughs; of course, Ombric would put something important in plain sight, marked in such a way that he knows its importance, though someone else might not ever make the connection. "Right here," Katherine says triumphantly, and double-clicks on the book. 

She enters a few more passwords she's sure she's not supposed to know, and the program opens up, cursor flashing in the little 'search' bar at the top right of the page. A chill runs down Katherine's spine, and somehow she's not at all surprised to turn and find Kozmotis leaning over her chair, staring intently at the screen. "What's your daughter's name?" she asks, her hands poised over the keyboard.

Kozmotis' answer is barely more than a breath, his eyes not leaving the screen. "Seraphina."

Katherine types the name 'Seraphina Pitchiner' into the search bar, and bangs the 'enter' key with slightly more flair than necessary. The screen flickers, a cool female voice announcing "Now searching database," as images and text whip past faster than the eye can follow, and Katherine turns a smile in Kozmotis' direction. "All we have to do now is wait," she says, and from the look on his face she can't tell if Kozmotis is about to laugh or cry. Katherine thinks maybe he doesn't know which any better than she does.

And that's when it all starts to go wrong. 

The door swings open at once, without warning, and Ombric is there, the look of panic in his eyes melting almost instantly into relief when he sees Katherine sitting in his chair. "Katherine! Where on earth have you been, I said no farther than the vending machines, they're evacuating the building, we have to -"

His voice stutters and dies as his eyes shift away from Katherine and to her right. She half-turns, to see Kozmotis staring at her uncle, leaning forward and somehow shrouded in dark like layers of fine cloth, his hand white-knuckled on the back of the chair and his sharp teeth bared in something only a very generous person could call a smile.

"Mr. Shalazar," Kozmotis says, and though it sounds pleasant enough on the surface, there's a mocking sort of edge to it, like Kozmotis is telling a cruel joke that only he and Katherine's uncle understand. The shadows have never made a sound before, that Katherine can remember, but now as they curl and uncurl like clenching fists, she could swear she can hear them hissing. "What an unexpected honour."

Ombric takes a full step back, his back pressing up against the doorframe. Katherine is certain that she could watch the Adam's apple in his throat bob as he swallows hard, were his white beard not in the way. "Pitch," he says, breathlessly, and Katherine feels the shudder that runs through the layers of darkness hanging on Kozmotis beside her.

"That is  _not_  my name!"

Ombric adjusts his glasses, stepping away from the doorframe and squaring his shoulders as he stares down Kozmotis' unnerving eyes, and for a moment Katherine feels pride in him swell to fill her ribcage from spine to sternum. "Let my niece go," Ombric says, in his sternest, most schoolmasterly voice.

"Uncle Ombric, it's all right," Katherine begins, but rather than give her a chance to explain, Ombric interrupts her.

"Katherine, get away from him."

"I was just trying to help -"

"I don't know what he's told you, but it's a lie." Ombric doesn't take his eyes from Kozmotis' face, and Katherine can feel agitated ripples running all through the shadows as her uncle takes another defiant step forward. She dares to risk a look down, and finds the shadow all around her, lapping at her feet.  _I mustn't scream_ , she thinks, with the sudden bizarre clarity of nightmare, as the dark around her seethes.  _No matter what happens, I absolutely must not scream_.

"The only liar here is you, old man," Kozmotis says, and something about his voice is subtly, indefinably wrong. Katherine catches sight of a flicker beyond the gathering cloud of dark that seems to make him tower over Ombric, Nightlight drawing his crystal dagger, and she reaches as surreptitiously as she can manage for her own knife. 

She doesn't reach it. Her fingertips have only just brushed the hilt when the dark rises up like a wave from the floor, sweeping over her and carrying her out of the chair and into Kozmotis' grip. She swallows a little shout, remembering her own admonition not to scream, and tries to pull away instead. It's impossible. The dark around her has a grasp like iron, the hands on her shoulders digging in like the talons of some enormous bird of prey. 

"I wouldn't try that if I were you," Kozmotis says, almost conversationally, to Nightlight, whose dagger is now fully extended. Katherine feels a hand leave her shoulder, spidery fingers stroking her hair, and a wave of revulsion sweeps through her. "I can move just as fast as you can, and, as you can see...your precious girl is much closer to me."

Katherine manages, with some difficulty, to swallow the strong and insistent desire to throw up. "What are you doing?" she asks, instead, in as clear and carrying a voice as she can manage. 

Kozmotis' voice is suffocatingly sweet. "Your dear, dear uncle hasn't told you yet, has he?" 

The words are poisoned, slithering into Katherine's ear like eels, and yet she can't help but look to Ombric. Can't help but see the expression that crosses his face. It quickly turns to determination, but for a moment, Katherine is certain it is purely and completely guilty.

She shakes her head, trying to clear the cobwebs from her thoughts. Something here is not right, something's twisted sideways. Still, she doesn't break eye contact with her uncle as she pleads, "Told me  _what_?"

"Don't listen to him, Katherine," Ombric says shortly. "He's only trying to scare you." There's an edge to his voice that Katherine has never heard before as he continues, "And he is not a good man."

"What?" Katherine says, over Kozmotis' sputters. "But - but you - General Pitchiner -"

"That's who he told you he was?" Katherine feels ice sliding down her spine as her uncle shakes his head. "Katherine,  _please_ , listen to me.  _He is a liar_."

The shadows shake, quiver and leap and thunder like an earthquake. 

Kozmotis' voice is loud enough to be heard clearly over the rumble of the shaken room, heavy with unpleasant harmonics that one throat should not be able to produce. "LIAR!?"

Katherine tries to clap her hands over her ears to drown it out, but she finds she can't move her arms from where they're pinned at her sides. The grip on her shoulders tightens almost unbearably, and she can't help letting out a cry, squirming as best she can to try to get out of Kozmotis' grasp.

Things happen very quickly after that. There's a flash in the right side of Katherine's vision that must be Nightlight lunging forward with his dagger outstretched, and suddenly something wraps around Katherine's throat and yanks her roughly backwards, into the air. She tries to catch a breath, clawing with both hands at the strangely insubstantial surface of the shadows holding her in place even as she kicks out in desperate hope of catching something, anything solid.

Both Nightlight and Ombric freeze in place, and a low, rolling, maddened laughter pours out of the dark that surrounds Katherine. 

"Oh ho  _ho_ ," Kozmotis says, and Katherine, struggling for breath, knows that had she not known it was him speaking, she would never have been able to recognise his voice. "That certainly got your attention, didn't it?"

"Let - let her go," Ombric stammers, and Nightlight brandishes his dagger, but Kozmotis only shakes his head with a mocking grin. The shadow wrapped around Katherine's neck tightens, just for a moment, cutting off what little air she had been able to suck down her throat, and she flails at the shadows holding her, desperate for a breath.

"I don't think so," Kozmotis says, silkily. "The girl and I are leaving. And if you don't want to see her hurt,  _Mr. Shalazar_...well, then, perhaps you shouldn't have -"

Whatever he was about to say is cut off by a cool female voice, steady and calm, a strange contrast to the atmosphere in the room. It takes Katherine a moment to realise it is coming from the computer speakers. "Search complete. One result found for: Seraphina Pitchiner. Displaying results."

The writhing dark all stops, stone-still. The tendril wrapped around Katherine's neck slackens enough to allow her a few choked breaths as Kozmotis turns, like a statue on a rotating pedestal, to face the computer screen.

Glowing from the screen, the longish, somewhat pointed face of a girl of about Katherine's age looks out with a solemn expression. There's a clear family resemblance, from the girl's prominent nose and high forehead, to the masses of thick, wild black hair that frames her face.

Kozmotis doesn't move, like a butterfly pinned to a corkboard by the lance of the girl's stare, his eyes wide enough that the gold discs of his irises are like tiny moons. The whole room seems frozen with him, a perfect tableau, all holding their breath to see what happens next.

Then Kozmotis makes a little choked noise, low in his throat, like something wounded, and pushes Katherine away from him. She stumbles forward into Ombric's outstretched arms, burying her face in his shoulder and taking great gasps of air.

As soon as Katherine is clear, Nightlight lunges, stabbing out with his dagger, and finally Kozmotis seems to stir from the confines of whatever spell the girl's face put him under. He takes a step back out of Nightlight's reach, turning his stricken gaze from the computer screen to Ombric and Katherine.

"Katherine -" he starts, extending a hand, and Katherine can't help but flinch away, pressing herself into her uncle's chest and feeling his arms tighten protectively around her.

Kozmotis shuts his eyes, a shudder running through him as he tips his head back as though in pain. When he opens his eyes again, the sincerity in his expression strikes something in the pit of Katherine's heart, a sympathy she doesn't want to feel flooding her chest.

"I'm sorry," Kozmotis says, in a choked-off voice. He looks as though he'd like to say more, but Nightlight plants himself firmly between Kozmotis and Katherine, and Kozmotis shrinks back farther.

There is a sudden, sweeping darkness, and when the world rights itself, all Katherine can see are a few retreating shadows coiling away into a corner by the ceiling.

Kozmotis is gone.

...

Jack is lost.

He's been down this hallway twice before, he knows it. Which is impossible, because with the turns he's taken, there's no way he could've gotten that turned around. It would help if all the hallways weren't completely identical, of course.

It would also help if he had any idea of where he's going.

Jack doesn't actually know what he's looking for. Sure, it had felt great to walk away from the Guardians in a flurry of self-righteous anger, but now he's just feeling kind of stupid, kind of lonely, and really, really lost.

He's probably halfway across the compound, having dodged guards and would-be Guardians alike to get here, before he realises he's being followed.

He’s not sure, at first, that he even _is_ being followed – he’s got nothing to go on but the odd flicker in the corner of his eye when he slows to a stop, the sound of a quick gasp when he spins, a trail of fine glitter in the air a few feet behind him. It’s actually this last thing that makes Jack instantly certain that there’s somebody following him. The glitter has to be coming from _some_ where, but he doesn’t shed glitter, and he’s pretty sure this facility doesn’t either.

Jack spins, without warning, throwing a spray of jagged ice out around him as he does. A shriek meets his ears, high and frightened, and he stops short, hauling back on the wind to stop or at least slow the barrage of ice shards before they hit the little blonde girl standing behind him.

Jack hurries towards her as icicles fall to the floor around them with a deceptively gentle tinkling. “Oh gosh, are you okay? Sorry, I thought you were – somebody else. Why were you following me?”

The girl’s thrown her arms up to protect her head and crouched down to try to dodge Jack’s ice. She only straightens up slowly, and as she does, Jack gets a good, clear look at the yellow butterfly wings extending from her back, the glitter that flutters from them with every flap, and her all of two feet of height. “Hey, it’s okay, I’m not gonna hurt you.”

The girl shrinks back as Jack takes a step forward, her hands clutched close to her chest like she’s trying to hold an absent stuffed toy, her shaggy blonde hair falling over one eye as she shakes her head. Jack takes a breath, crouches down to put his head closer to level with hers and opens his arms like he’s offering a hug. “Look, it’s all right. See?”

The girl takes one more cautious step back, but then stops, giving Jack a wary look with her one visible eye.

“Where did you come from, huh?” Jack asks, but this time he’s not really expecting an answer. The girl doesn’t seem too talkative. Well, that’s fine. Most of the people he’s met haven’t been big on words. “Let’s get you out of here. This isn’t a great place for people like us to hang around.”

The girl squints at Jack. Jack sits as still as he can, holding his arms out, hoping he doesn’t look threatening. Slowly, cautiously, the little girl takes one step forward.

Jack hears the _pop_ behind him and is moving before it’s even fully registered what the sound is. He dives forward, pulling the little girl close to his chest and somersaulting forward with his body wrapped around her like a shield even as he throws another wave of sharpened ice shards in the direction of the gunshot. There’s a strangled scream and several more _pop_ s from behind Jack, and even though he keeps moving, dodging as best he can, he can’t get airborne with the girl weighing him down.

There’s a _crack_ , like a whip, and Jack dives, but his left leg explodes in pain and buckles under him. He falls, trying not to cry out, twisting as he does so that he doesn’t land with all his weight on the little girl. She’s full-on bawling, now, trying to struggle out of his grip, and Jack lets her. He’s not going to be much use to her now, but maybe he can buy her a little time to run if he ignores the pain and focuses all his energy on building a wall of ice between them and the guards –

Shadow pours up from the floor like mist rising off a lake, and suddenly the entire hall is shrouded in darkness. Jack doesn’t have time to scream when the floor vanishes from under him, leaving him hanging in a nothingness, no sense of up or down, no real sense of whether he even has a body or not –

The floor comes back, all at once. So does the pain. Jack grabs at his leg, grinding his back teeth together until tears spring up into his eyes, crystallize on his lashes. He’s not gonna scream. He’s not.

The shadows spit out the little girl, as well, and then coalesce into a tall pillar of dark, which extends a long, pale arm and sweeps shadow aside like veils to reveal Pitch Black’s long, narrow face. He looks down at Jack and the girl, his odd eyes flashing with some emotion that Jack can’t name, and then tosses his head, running a hand through his slicked-back hair in a way that, if he were anyone else, Jack would call ‘nervously’.

“I don’t know what you were doing on the fourth floor,” Pitch says, in a close approximation of the same sneering, confident voice from when Jack had first met him, “but you’re much closer to the exit now. Take the left fork.”

“Thanks?” Jack manages, through his still-gritted teeth. His whole leg feels like it’s on fire. The bullet must be lodged in bone or something, it should have started healing by now. He really hopes he won’t have to dig the bullet out in front of the little girl.

Speaking of the little girl, Jack looks to see how she’s doing, whether she’s hurt, whether she’s scared. He shouldn’t have worried. She takes one look up at the tower of darkness that is Pitch Black, and runs forward to wrap her chubby little arms as far around the shadows at what ought to be his feet as they can reach.

Pitch looks stunned, like someone’s just hit him across the face. He looks up and meets Jack’s eyes, and Jack realizes his expression must look pretty much the same.

“ ‘nk you,” the little girl shrieks up at Pitch, and then wanders away, off towards the left fork he’d told them to take.

Jack stays flat on the floor a moment longer, his eyes locked with Pitch’s. He’s just now remembering how Pitch had reacted the last time a Guardian had crossed him, realizing that Pitch could crush him right now with barely a thought, and from the look in Pitch’s eye, he’s realizing it too.

But instead, Pitch turns away. “Keep an eye on them,” he says, shortly, raising an arm and drawing shadow up with it.

“Wait! What about – the Guardians told me you knew about who we were before,” Jack calls, but the shadow is already starting to dissipate.

“Do you know who I was?” he yells, anyway, but the shadows in the hall are dusty and ordinary and silent.


	16. Chapter 16

Jack’s leg really hurts.

He’d never have expected the little girl to be so _fast_ , but he hasn’t seen her since she took off toddling in the direction Pitch had pointed them. It doesn’t help that he’s limping after her, of course, helped along by the wind. His leg is starting to heal, slowly, but it’s not nearly fast enough to get him back to full capacity yet.

There’s a little sliver of worry trying to work its way under his skin about that, about the fact that they’re following Pitch’s instructions at all, but he’s got more than enough to worry about with his dragging leg. He’s not sure why Pitch would help them, but if he’d wanted Jack out of the way, he could have just left him there with the guards firing at him. Pitch has always acted weird, sure, but he’s never actually tried to _hurt_ Jack.

And – and Jack’s no Guardian. There’s no reason Pitch would _want_ to hurt him.

Right?

There’s noise up ahead, human voices, and Jack presses himself to the wall. A sinking feeling fills his gut as he listens to the quiet buzz of the voices. Nevermind, this was definitely a trap, Jack’s an idiot for ever listening to Pitch, and he’s just going to limp quietly away now and find a hidden place to hole up and heal in peace.

Except that the voices he’s hearing are too high-pitched and excited to be guards. In fact, they kind of sound like…

Kids?

Jack peels himself away from the wall enough to peer cautiously around the corner. There’s a little crowd of children, none of them any older than about twelve, gathered in the middle of the hallway, deep enough in a heated conversation that none of them have noticed Jack yet. That’s dangerous. They’ve obviously not had too much training, Jack knew not to let himself get distracted enough not to notice hostiles well before he was – well. That’s interesting. He’s not really sure when his memories of the arena start, though it feels like forever. But there _had_ to have been something before it, for his s– for that girl to have known him, right?

It’s a mystery, but it’s one for later. Right now, Jack tunes back in on the kids’ conversation. Maybe they know what’s going on, or how to get out of here. Or maybe they’re just as lost as he is. Either way, they might all be better off together.

“- pretty sure we’ve been going in circles,” the boy with golden light spilling from his eyes is saying, and Jack’s heart stutters in his chest. That’s the kid he’d fought with back in the dorms! Now that he’s really looking, he recognizes the tall girl who’d created that forcefield as well, and –

The dark-haired girl Jack _knows_ he knows from somewhere, the girl who’d called him her brother, looks up and catches his eyes. She freezes with a smile just beginning to spread across her face, darts a wary glance in the direction of the golden-eyed boy. This time, she doesn’t shout Jack’s name, just takes a cautious step back from the group.

“ _I_ wasn’t the one who lost Sophie!” one of the twins shouts, gesturing with one arm towards the scrawny blond boy. “And I wasn’t the one who decided we should go off-track looking for her, either!”

“Would you rather just leave a little kid here?” the tall redhead demands, hotly, and the golden-eyed boy rests a hand on her arm, looking up at her. The dark-haired girl, clearly seeing her opportunity, takes two tiptoing steps backwards out of the little circle, and sidles towards the corner and Jack.

Her eyes are very big and brown when she turns them on him, shimmering slightly with what Jack really hopes aren’t tears. “I _knew_ you wouldn’t leave me there! I knew you’d come!” She lunges forward, and it takes everything in Jack not to react like he’s been trained to, not to fight her off or call up a wind to whisk him away, when she throws both arms around his middle and squeezes.

This time, it’s Jack’s turn to freeze.

He’s been looking for her ever since he left the Guardians, but now that he’s found her, he realizes, he has absolutely no idea what to say to her. No idea how to react to this. She’s very warm, holding him like this, and he’s uncomfortably aware of how small she is, how fragile, how much she’s trusting him right now. She’s not squeezing hard enough to hurt him, and as far as he can tell, she’s not really trying all that hard to keep him from moving. She’s just got her arms around him. And – and her eyes closed. Jeez. She must _really_ trust him.

It makes Jack feel a little sick.

The girl must notice that something’s wrong, because she slowly releases her hold on Jack’s waist, drawing back to look him in the eye. “Jack?” she asks, her voice wobbling, just a little bit, and oh, shit, those _are_ tears. Jack cracks a smile almost instinctively, bringing up a hand to brush the one tear that overflows away with his thumb.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay. You’re okay.” He makes his grin a little wider. “There’s nothing to cry about.”

“Jack?” the girl says again, but this time it sounds like more of a question. She’s looking at him like she’s looking for something, and Jack’s suddenly filled with a sharp terror that she’s not going to find it. Maybe – maybe she’d just been mistaken, earlier, maybe she hadn’t gotten a good look at him, maybe she’s not really his sister, maybe he’s just lost his place with the Guardians and helped out the bad guy for nothing – “Are you okay?”

“Huh? Fine, I’m fine,” Jack says, quickly, and then looks up. The other kids have stopped in the middle of their conversation, all staring in his direction. He gives them a little wave, trying not to wince when he meets the golden eyes of the boy he’d fought with earlier.

“Emma?” the boy asks, and the dark-haired girl lets go of Jack’s waist, turning and spreading out her arms like she’s shielding him from the rest of the kids.

“I tried to tell you! It’s Jack!”

“Wait, that brother you’re always talking about?” the girl who looks like a firetruck in a tutu with the iridescent spiral horn protruding from her forehead thunders. “He’s real?”

“ _Yes!_ I told you he’d come!” The dark-haired girl – Emma – turns and looks up at Jack again, her eyes huge and full of love and trust.

“Um,” Jack says. “Would this be a bad time to say that I don’t actually remember you?”

…

Neither Katherine nor Ombric say anything for quite a while after Kozmotis vanishes. It takes several minutes for Katherine to even feel steady enough to let go of her uncle’s shoulders, and even then he seems reluctant to let go of her, as well.

“What was all that about?” Katherine makes herself ask, at last, and Ombric shakes his head.

“Nothing that needs to concern you.”

“But it does concern me!” Katherine pulls herself from her uncle’s arms, taking a large step back. “It concerns me very much that children are being treated like – like animals here! That people are being taken from their homes and families to be turned into – into whatever Kozmotis -”

“ _Please_ , Katherine,” Ombric interrupts. “None of this is what you think. I tried to tell you -”

“How could you be part of this?” Katherine demands. “How could you do this? To the man you said was your hero? To _children_?”

“I had no choice!” Ombric thunders, and Katherine falls silent.

Since the beginning of her memories, Katherine can count three times when her uncle has raised his voice with her. Two of those times, she had foolishly ignored a warning and had blithely followed her curiosity instead – once, when she’d ridden her bike over the hill famously known throughout the neighbourhood as ‘Devil’s Drop’, and once, when she’d tried to climb the shelves of his tallest bookshelf. Both times, Katherine had broken a bone.

The third had occurred when she’d found a trunk full of her mother’s things in the attic, and Ombric had found her sitting in a pile of her mother’s old clothes, reading old letters.

The point is, Ombric doesn’t raise his voice, not unless he’s powerfully upset or Katherine is in great danger or both. Katherine swallows down the tirade she’d been ready to hurl at her uncle, though it sticks in her throat.

“Why not?” she asks, instead.

…

The girl’s face falls so fast that it almost gives Jack whiplash. “You don’t -”

“Remember – pretty much anything. You seem sort of familiar, but I don’t know your name, how I know you, where we came from or how we got here – everything before I ended up in the facility is all a big blank.” Jack offers her an apologetic smile, but the girl just shakes her head, staring up at him with those big, kicked-puppy eyes.

“But you _have_ to remember! You’re my _brother_!”

“I’m sorry,” Jack says, and the girl takes a step back, away from him, still shaking her head. “I was hoping you could tell me…?”

“So you’re _not_ here to take us back and make us do more tests?” the golden-eyed boy asks, sounding skeptical, and Jack gives his own head a shake. His injured leg is throbbing, and he hopes that means it’s healing.

“No. I’m not one of them,” Jack says. It sounds so flat, so final. His leg gives a particularly nasty twinge, and it takes everything in him not to react.

“Then what _are_ you?” one of the twins demands, his hands curling into fists at his sides.

Jack opens his mouth to answer, but finds he has nothing to say.

Instead, a familiar voice calls down the hall. Jack can’t place it at first; it sounds strangely subdued, slower and a little more hesitant than he remembers. “Hello?”

The kids’ gazes shift, to look past him. Jack turns around, to see what they’re looking at, and instinctively drops into a defensive crouch, hissing in pain when his injured leg threatens to give way under him.

Tooth and Sandy are standing a little ways down the hall, Tooth with her scales laid flat against her body like she’s trying to make herself smaller, Sandy beaming and holding the hand of the little blonde girl Jack had found wandering earlier. At the sight of Jack, Tooth stops in her tracks, but Sandy look up and smiles broad and bright.

“I think – we found something of yours,” Tooth says, in that same strangely subdued voice, and the little blonde girl lets go of Sandy’s hand to barrel down the hall and wrap both arms around the legs of the golden-eyed boy. Tooth watches her go, before looking back up to meet Jack’s eyes.

“We should talk,” she says.

“Yeah,” Jack agrees, warily. “We should.”

…

The halls fall into darkness as Kozmotis passes, like a vicious summer storm advancing ruthlessly through the facility. Guards who bravely venture into the dark – or are unfortunately caught up in its inexorable wave – are left stripped of their weaponry and armour, shaking and gibbering in its wake.

At the very centre of the whirling storm of shadows, Kozmotis marches through the facility.

He knows the shadows have been summoned – and agitated – by his mood. It comes as no surprise - he’s feeling quite as stirred and shaken as they appear to be. His feet carry him forward, turning corners automatically, the shadows lashing out almost without his direction to take care of anyone who approaches too closely.

His mind reels.

Try as he might, Kozmotis can’t seem to rid himself of the lingering taste of the young girl’s terror, made all the sweeter by how hard she’d tried to be brave. He can blame it on the presence of the man – the _monster_ – whose research and inventions have allowed this atrocity of a program to exist all he likes, but Kozmotis still can’t believe he’d let himself be so carried away. That he’d let himself go so spectacularly – in front of a child, no less! A child who had done nothing but try to help him!

He’d – he’d nearly –

Kozmotis chokes back the thought, trying to focus instead on where his feet are taking him, on using the shadows at his command to seep along hallways, under doors, through the vents and the ceiling and the wiring, to peer through the entire facility at once and search out his destination. It takes all his concentration, and though he welcomes that, welcomes the distraction from his racing thoughts and the spiral of self-recrimination he had started to stumble down, he can’t help but remember wistfully the feeling of being _part_ of his cloud of shifting shadows and shivering, breathless fear, of wielding them with the barest whisper of a thought, as natural as his own limbs, pure extensions of his own being –

He stops himself, refocuses, again, on the task at hand.

Seraphina is here. Seraphina is _alive_. Seraphina – he will not think of what else she might be. He will _not_. He will not dwell on the reason why he couldn’t find her amongst the others, on the reason he hadn’t been able to feel her fear, on his own time trapped at the mercy of Moonclipper Corp. On what they’d tried to force him to do. On _how_ they’d tried to force him –

No. That way madness lies.

He’s losing it again. Kozmotis can feel it, bits and pieces of himself spiraling away into long tendrils of shadow, growing stronger and less careful with each crack they slink through and find no sign of Sera behind. Soon, if he’s not careful, he’ll be tearing the facility to shreds as he goes. The thought has its own appeal, but Kozmotis doesn’t dare look too closely at it. He has no doubt he will need all his strength for once he does find his daughter. He ought not to waste it now.

It takes a great deal of concentration to ignore the snickering thought that whispers, knowingly, that he’s afraid that if he starts to destroy whatever stands in his path, he will no longer be able to stop.

…

“I think…you were right,” Tooth says, quiet. Jack, looking over her shoulder, notices the kids watching them nervously, like they’re getting ready to run. Sandy turns and beams at them, waving gently, and Jack notices that, even though the boy with the golden eyes shifts to push the small girl with the wings behind him, she still giggles and waves back.

Tooth turns, following Jack’s gaze, and a soft smile crosses her face as well at the sight. It vanishes all too quickly, though, as she turns back to Jack. “I think – when you said that that girl had called you her brother, I -”

She cuts herself off, looking down, one fist clenched at her throat and her wings, uncharacteristically, drooping down from her shoulders like an iridescent cape.

“I had a sister,” she says, so quiet that at first Jack almost doesn’t hear her. “Sisters…?”

Jack has no idea what to say, so he settles for reaching out to rest a hand on Tooth’s shoulder. Her head snaps up, her arm with it, and they both freeze. Jack can feel the tension in his arm where Tooth’s forearm smacked against it, and he knows that if she hadn’t stopped herself, she would’ve broken his arm.

“Sorry,” Tooth chirps, giggling nervously. “I’m still a little jumpy.”

Jack forces a smile, but he can feel his own cheek twitch.

“You’re Guardians, right?” the boy with the golden eyes interrupts, apparently no longer able to hold himself back. “Are all of you Guardians, or just you two? Why are you here?”

“You won’t take us back without a fight!” the short, stocky girl with the spiral horn growing from the centre of her forehead yells, shaking a fist in Tooth’s direction. The twins and the tall girl shout agreement, and the short blond boy too, though his voice wavers and his shoulders slouch, like he’s trying to back away from his own mouth.

Sandy shakes his head, frowning.

“Nobody’s taking anybody anywhere,” Jack says, glancing over at Tooth, hoping it won’t come to a fight. Somehow, though, he doesn’t think it will.

He looks from the kids, standing together in a tight clump with the two smallest girls in the middle, back to Sandy and Tooth, who both look a little lost in their own way.

“You guys…don’t want to become Guardians, huh?” he asks, and the boy with the golden eyes looks up at him like he’s just asked if they want to replace their legs with shark-bears. “Hey, do – do any of you remember your lives before this?”

The boy with the golden eyes quirks an eyebrow, his confusion growing deeper. “You really don’t remember anything, huh?”

Jack glances past the boy’s ear, meets the eyes of the girl who had called him her brother.

“Yeah,” the blond boy says, and Jack jumps. “We – remember.” He makes a face. “Monty. I’m twelve. I was in the Gifted and Talented program at school.”

“Pippa,” the tall girl says, giving a little wave. Sandy waves enthusiastically back. “Last thing I remember before I was here, I was at the library.”

“We were sledding,” one of the twins says, looking at his brother, who nods.

“I hit a tree.”

“Ballet lessons!” the girl with the spiral horn rumbles.

“Sophie and I were making dinner,” the golden-eyed boy says.

There’s a moment of silence, and Jack finds himself turning to face the girl who’d called him her brother. She meets his eyes, and draws a deep breath. Jack finds himself holding his.

“We were ice skating,” she says.

…

The whir of the computer fan underlines the silence.

“The first thing you need to know,” Ombric says, finally, “is that no matter what, I love you more than -”

“Than the ocean loves the moon,” Katherine finishes for him, just like she has since she was old enough to know the words. Usually, she finds the familiar saying reassuring, but for some reason, hearing it now makes the floor feel like it’s falling out from under her. “Why -”

“The second thing you need to know,” Ombric continues, turning away from Katherine towards the long, solemn face of the girl on the computer screen, “is that the man you met today is not General Kozmotis Pitchiner.”

He takes a deep breath, and, before Katherine can argue, says, “And he never was.”


	17. Chapter 17

_“Jack!”_

_The voice is high, childish, frightened. No - not frightened._

_Terrified._

_“Jack, I’m scared!”_

_And underneath it all, the gunshot sound of cracking ice._

…

The hallways and the shivering scent he’s following, fear barely concealed under bravado and sublimated into violence, both run out in the same place. They both come to an end at the bottom of the facility, past several basement entrances that Kozmotis suspects no one was ever meant to know about, at a thick metal door, sealed like a vault.

It doesn’t matter. There’s shadow on the other side.

…

“It started with the Moons,” Ombric says. He shuffles over to the office chair and sinks into it, and Katherine is struck by how old he seems, lowering himself inch by inch into the seat. “Not Manny. His parents. They – they were good people. They wanted to do some good in the world.”

He lets out a huge breath, more a gust of wind torn free of his lungs than a mere human exhale, and combs his fingers through his beard. “And then they lost their son.”

…

“The ice cracked,” Jack says, and everyone turns to him, eyes wide.

The brown-haired girl stared hardest of all, her eyes wide and shimmering faintly with something that makes Jack’s chest feel tight, like an iron band is squeezing all the air out of him.

She looks hopeful.

“Yeah,” she says. “The ice cracked.”

Jack nods. “And I fell in.”

…

The room on the other side of the door is lined with glass coffins.

Kozmotis swirls up out of the darkness to find himself surrounded by clouded mirrors, vague dark shapes standing behind frosted, blue-glowing glass.

Some of them look human.

…

“They loved Nicodemus. So much. It devastated them when they found out that he was sick. Losing him nearly tore them apart. And I -”

Instead of finishing his sentence, Ombric leans forward, resting his head in his hands.

There’s a strange heaviness in the air, Katherine realises, like a low, rolling thunderstorm gliding along the horizon. She can feel it pressing against her eardrums, making everything sound curiously muffled and hollow.

“Uncle Ombric?” she asks, wanting to break the odd tension more than she wants for her uncle to finish this sad, strange story that’s spilling out of him in fragments.

“You must understand, they were very dear friends,” Ombric says, to his feet. “I would have done – anything, anything I could, to make it easier for them. To undo it. To bring him back.”

He looks up, at last, and Katherine is surprised to see his eyes are shimmering, brimming.

Quietly, he says, “And I thought I could.”

…

Jack pushes at the edges of the memory, but nothing more comes.

“That – that’s all,” he admits, bitterly. “I don’t remember anything else.”

“That’s all right!” the dark-hair girl all but shouts. She moves, like she’s going to give him a hug, but draws back at the last second, clapping her hands in front of herself instead. “You didn’t remember anything when you first found us, and now you remember skating with me! It’ll come back, you just need to -”

She doesn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. A sound like metal tearing shrieks through the hall, and the air between her and Jack tears open.

…

It’s strange. The rest of the building is permeated with fear, saturated in it, fear leaking from each pore of the concrete, flooding down the endless labyrinth of hallways, bubbling up from the baseboards. Kozmotis has grown used to it, adapted to tuning out the constant buzz of terrified minds, to the point where he hardly thinks of them anymore. Hardly notices, like the fish who fails to notice the sea it swims in, like the person who fails to notice the air they breathe.

But this room, this little tomb lined with glass coffins, is silent.

Despite himself, Kozmotis can feel his pulse thump in his throat. It’s too quiet. The lack of fear is muffling, almost suffocating – and with that thought, he remembers, with a jarring lurch, where he’s felt this before.

In the frosted glass around him, golden and scared, his own eyes reflect back.

…

The air in the office seems to have turned as thick as soup, and it presses against Katherine unnaturally, overly warm and suffocating.

“Uncle Ombric -” she begins, but her uncle doesn’t seem to hear her. His eyes are a little unfocused, as though he’s looking not at the drab office around him, its stacks of books and the screens dominating the wall, but deep into the well of his own memories.

“It all seemed to be going so well, at first,” he muses, all but under his breath, so that Katherine has to strain in order to make out the words. “The first few experiments were, of course, failures, but one expects that…and then, when I realised I could use my nanobots to eliminate the gene sequence for the disease that had killed Nico -”

He cuts himself off, with a shake of his head.

“It was folly,” he says, looking directly at Katherine as he does. “The arrogance and folly of a young man. I thought it could be done, so I did it. I thought it would be good. I thought it might make a dear friend smile again.”

There is no trace of a smile on his own face as he says, “I never considered what else my discovery might be used for.”

…

Bunny explodes out of the rift in the air almost before Jack can throw up an ice shield. His claws tear through the sheet of ice like paper, but by then Jack’s already got a dagger-sharp icicle in each hand and is slashing, stabbing, at anything he can reach. It’s not a lot. Bunny is a whirlwind of fury, a spinning pinwheel of death, like a blender with the plastic casing broken off.

“You – you’re workin’ with Pitch!” he snarls, as Jack dodges a vicious swipe at his face. It’s easier than it was in the arena, and Jack wonders if Bunny’s angry enough to be getting sloppy. It’s absurd – the Guardians don’t get compromised by their emotions. That’s the whole _point_. “You’ve been workin’ with Pitch this whole time! _What didja do to Tooth?_ ”

“Whoa, whoa, what?” Jack stammers, stepping back under the onslaught. He wraps wind around himself, tripping out of the reach of Bunny’s claws. “I didn’t -”

The wing that slices through his vision is iridescent, translucent. It looks delicate, like one wrong move would crumple it. Jack hears it whistle through the air, though, feels the top blade whip past his nose, and thanks his lucky stars that it didn’t come half an inch closer.

“Nobody did anything to me,” Tooth says, her voice steely but fierce, her wing held steady between Bunny and Jack despite the vicious swipes Bunny feints in her direction. “Bunny, I’m _fine_.”

“Yeah, you say that,” Bunny snarls, an edge of desperation working into his voice as he makes one last desperate lunge for Jack, drawing back when Tooth’s wings blur into nothing but a faint, deadly shimmer in the air. “Because this drongo’s got Sandy brainwashed and he’s turned around and brainwashed you! You’re a _Guardian_ , Toothie! You don’t have sisters! It’s just one of Sandy’s dreams!”

He reaches out, apparently heedless of her wings, and grabs her by her armoured shoulders. Jack catches a glimpse of Bunny’s face as he stares into Tooth’s eyes, the desperation and the slow, creeping despair as he searches her face and doesn’t find whatever he’s looking for.

“Wake up,” he says, his voice soft and raw, and Jack has to pull back, suddenly certain he’s not supposed to be hearing this. “I know you can. _Please_.”

…

Kozmotis forces himself to take a step forwards, towards his own reflection in the frosted glass. It’s harder than expected. He feels like he’s attempting to uproot his own feet from a position fixed in the floor. Even when he was expecting landmines along every road, he’s never been this afraid to take a step.

He takes another slow, agonizing step.

And another.

By the time he draws close enough with the glass coffin at the end of the room to see through his own reflection to the shadowy figure inside, he’s near enough that his breath fogs against the surface.

He immediately recognises the face on the other side of the glass. After all, he’s seen it so many times before, seen it grow and change in front of his eyes.

It’s so very like his own.

His fist comes down against the glass before he even knows he means to move. The glass shudders on impact, sending a shock of pain up Kozmotis’ arm to his shoulder, but it doesn’t so much as crack. He pounds against it again and again, with fists and with shadows, seeking uselessly for purchase along the sides, for any crack or crevice that he might work open, for any way to break in.

He finds nothing. Behind the glass, Seraphina’s frosted eyelids remain peacefully closed.

Kozmotis gives the glass one final thump, slamming the side of his fist against the glass with all of his weight behind it. The glass shudders, but holds, and he slumps forward, pressing his open palm against the glass above his daughter’s face. His fingers slide, slick and sticky with something, and leave a red smear in their wake. He hadn’t even noticed his hands were bleeding.

She’s there. After all his searching, all his terror, she’s _right there_. Mere inches under his hands.

And she’s still so completely beyond his reach.

Kozmotis rests his forehead against the glass, feels the chill radiating through it. He swallows the sob that threatens to rise, lets it choke him.

Slowly, distantly, he becomes aware of the slow handclaps echoing through the room behind him.

…

“What are you saying?” Katherine asks. She has an uneasy, unsettled feeling that she already knows, but somehow she understands that she must hear it from Ombric’s own mouth. “Uncle Ombric, did you – did you bring Nicodemus _back_?”

Ombric shakes his head, slowly. “Of course not. The dead, once dead, are quite beyond the reach of any mortal science.”

Katherine lets out a slow, shaky breath, one she hadn’t quite realised she’d been holding in.

“No,” Ombric goes on, his voice warm and comforting as a bedtime story. “I cloned him.”

Katherine blinks, as though that will help her hear more clearly. “You -”

“Cloned him. I grew another being from Nico’s genetic material.” Ombric takes in the expression on Katherine’s face with growing alarm. “If this is disturbing to you, there’s no need to -”

“No,” Katherine says, with as much authority as she can muster. “I wanted to know. I _want_ to know.” She swallows down the shivery feeling that threatens her lungs, squaring her shoulders and raising her head. “So every one of those people – of those _children_ I met – they’re…?”

“Clones,” Ombric confirms, with a nod of his head. “It took some time to perfect the process, of course; my best Nico could barely speak. The Lunanoffs loved him anyway, of course. He became a perfect big brother for their second son – and a perfect protector, as well.” He lets out a long sigh. “You see, the nanobots I programmed to eradicate Nico’s illness…they worked far better than even I could have imagined. Nico was…”

Katherine doesn’t miss the way her uncle’s eyes dart to the corner of the room, where Nightlight had sat crouched, ready to spring at Koz- well. If her uncle is to be believed, the _clone_ of Kozmotis.

“Special,” Ombric says, finally. “Unusual. _Gifted_.”

…

“It’s _not_ a dream!” Tooth snaps, her wings snapping out to their full extension as she does. “I, I remember -”

“The memories aren’t real!” Bunny yells back, ducking as she flies at him and throwing himself under her reaching arms, grabbing her around her waist and bowling her out of the air. Jack has to somersault backwards in midair to avoid a vicious slash from one of Tooth’s flailing wings, finds himself face to face with Sandy, who gives him a worried look and shakes his head. “That’s what I’ve been tryin’ ta tell you! I’ve got ‘em too! But they’re _not ours!_ ”

That seems to stop Tooth cold, her wings going limp and flat against the floor. “What?”

Bunny’s voice is heavy, regretful. “They’re not our memories, sheila.”

“Well, whose else would they be?”

“Tell me,” Bunny says. “In any of those memories. Have you got wings?”

“Of course not, I wasn’t -” Tooth shakes her head. “I wasn’t a Guardian then.”

“And d’ya really think they gave you two whole new _limbs_ here?”

Tooth pauses, hovering, in midair.

Bunny says, so soft and kind that Jack almost thinks he’s sorry to have to be saying it, “Toothie…we’ve never been anything but Guardians.”

…

The handclaps are joined by slow footsteps, echoing against the concrete floor as the person behind Kozmotis advances. Kozmotis doesn’t move. Can’t. His entire body feels impossibly heavy, his bones turned to water inside the cocoon of lead that is his flesh.

The footsteps draw to a stop just behind Kozmotis. This close, there’s a sliver of unease that Kozmotis can feel directed towards him working its way through the still air, but it’s thin and shivering, barely there.

“Well, well. I hadn’t thought you’d ever make it this far,” a voice says, male and deep and dismissive, and Kozmotis feels himself go stiff. He knows that voice.

Earlier today, he’d heard it condemn him to destruction.

With an enormous effort, Kozmotis manages to lift his head from the cool glass, to turn to face the man in the black suit. The man stares back, his expression a little wary, but not wary enough, like a tourist approaching a wild animal he’d climbed out of his car to get nearer to.

“You’re not actually upset over that thing in there, are you?” the man in the black suit asks, a hint of annoyance working its way through his curiosity, and a twinge of anger flares through the frost that seems to have worked its way through all of Kozmotis’ bones.

“That _thing_ is my daughter,” he says, and is rewarded with a flare of that unease that the man had held back so successfully until now. The man in the black suit doesn’t take a step back, but Kozmotis can tell that it takes an enormous effort.

“Fascinating,” he mutters. “Too bad for you I don’t really care about your psychology. You’re no use to us like this. _Look_ at yourself.” He gestures one broad, carefully-manicured hand at Kozmotis, slumped against the glass coffin against the wall. “Pathetic. We sourced you from the finest military genius this nation’s ever had at its helm, you know that?”

Kozmotis stares. The sliver of unease at the man’s heart pulses, flares. He coughs into one hand, wet and sickly.

“Of course you don’t,” the man in the black suit says, sounding peevish. “You still think you’re him, don’t you.”

…

“I don’t understand. If you did all of this only to help a friend, then…how did it come to this?”

Ombric doesn’t speak for a long moment, staring at his hands.

“Greed is a powerful motivator,” he says, at last.

“You mean, your friends -”

“No, no!” Ombric hurries to reassure Katherine, as though the rest of his story isn’t disturbing enough. “No, unfortunately, the Lunanoffs…”

He’s silent, again, this time for long enough that Katherine isn’t certain he’s going to start speaking again.

“Their son was too young to take over Moonclipper Corp when they died,” he says, at last, in a voice that makes Katherine instantly sure she doesn’t want to ask anything more about what happened to the Lunanoffs. She’s only heard Ombric sound so - so hollow when he…

Well, when he was talking about her own parents.

“The corporation was placed in the hands of a friend of the family, a trustee – who, unfortunately, placed his own profits before all else.” Ombric heaves a deep sigh. “He shortly discovered Nightlight, what he was, _who_ he was. And he saw an opportunity to capitalise.”

“But why would you do something like this? For someone like him?”

Ombric continues as though he hasn’t heard Katherine. “The first Guardians were failures. He wanted them to be little more than biological weapons, organic robots who would do as they were programmed. He didn’t anticipate that starting them from a blank slate would require him to give them years of training to ingrain anything that made the originals special into their minds, didn’t anticipate that it was real-world experience, not didactic rote training, that made someone like Kozmotis Pitchiner so capable. Deciding to implant some of the originals’ memories in the Guardians was the smartest decision the man ever made – and the most evil.”   

Katherine resisted the urge to stamp her foot on the floor. She was far too old for such a childish show of protest, now, no matter how much she wanted to. “But _why_?”

Ombric still won’t look at her.

“Why would you do this? How could you – they’re _kids_!”

“I had no choice!”

Ombric looks nearly as startled as Katherine is by his own sudden outburst.

“Of course you had a choice!” Katherine shouts back. “You always have a choice!”

“You don’t understand!”

“Then _explain!_ ”

Katherine stops. She finds herself breathing hard, as though she’s been running.

Her uncle rubs his right thumb over the back of his left hand, over and over and over again.

“I used funds from the Moonclipper Corp to create Nightlight,” he says, at length. The words fall into the silence like raindrops into drought. “They own him. But more than that, they own all my research, my experiments, my designs – and anything made with them.”

The air around Katherine seems to have grown thicker, holding her in place. It crackles with something she cannot name.

She can taste fear, copper-sharp, on the back of her own tongue.

Ombric turns towards the image of the girl on the computer screen before he says, "I have always told you that you were the sole survivor of the crash which killed your parents."

Katherine swallows, hard, but the sharp taste does not disappear.

Ombric’s very voice sounds heavy as he says, the two soft words ringing in the quiet of the office, “I lied.”


	18. Chapter 18

Katherine’s feet slap out a steady _tap-tap-tap_ against the carpet as she runs down the hall.

Distraught as she is, she’s still got half an ear listening out behind her – but no footsteps follow her. Ombric isn’t coming after her.

Katherine can’t decide if she’s hurt or relieved.

It feels as though her whole head is filled with static, or cotton-wool, something buzzing and stuffy and meaningless and overwhelming. For once, in all her short life, she can’t fit what’s just happened into what she knows. It feels as though her whole world has been taken up and shaken like a snow globe, and pieces of what she thought she knew are all falling in glittering flakes around her.

She isn’t real.

Her parents are not her parents. Her parents – _had_ a beautiful, wonderful baby girl who they loved with all their hearts. Who died with them in the crash. Katherine is nothing but a copy. Nothing but that little girl’s shadow.

She runs until her toe snags against a raised edge of a carpet tile and she trips, tumbling to the floor before she has a chance to catch herself. Katherine throws out her hands as she falls, but only succeeds in skinning the heels of both. She clutches both hands against her chest, rising only enough to sit up. Her legs feel as though they’ve turned to jelly beneath her, her arms trembling. She catches herself rocking back and forth as she cradles her injured hands, and the realisation makes the lump building in her throat suddenly threaten to choke her as her eyes grow hot.

What kind of a pathetic little girl is she, crying in a heap on the floor? Katherine has always tried her very hardest to be brave, to be someone like the heroines of her favourite books…what would they think of her now?

Katherine sucks in one long, deep, shuddering breath. Then another.

Ombric hasn’t come after her. She’s not certain why – perhaps he feels guilty. Perhaps he wants to give her space. Perhaps – but it doesn’t matter. He hasn’t come after her, and once again, Katherine is alone in the middle of what may well be a revolution that will determine her own freedom, as well as that of countless innocent people. This is no time to lay down and cry.

Katherine tips her head up to stare at the buzzing ceiling light, blinks until her eyes feel dry enough to look back down again, and then, slowly, unsteadily, pushes herself to her feet.

She looks down the hall in front of her, takes a deep breath in, and then, before she can think about it and start herself crying again, puts one foot in front of the other.

…

“But – no. That can’t be possible.”

Bunny does something that Jack’s never seen him do before. He stops, and takes a step back away from Tooth, raising both hands with the palms facing her as he does, his shoulders dipping into a non-threatening half-crouch. His voice stays gentle and low as he says, “I’m sorry, Toothie.”

Tooth clutches her head, shaking it back and forth, eyes squeezed shut in obvious distress. “That can’t – no! I have sisters. I was a dental hygienist! And it’s not just me, Sandy -”

“Has false memories too.” Bunny doesn’t move, his voice still soft and quiet, like he’s speaking to a startled horse.

“How do you know?”

It takes a moment for Jack to believe that he’s actually spoken. The words break through the tentative calm like the snap of thin ice underfoot, and everyone – even North, who had herded the kids out of the way of Tooth and Bunny’s fight and is now sitting on the floor with the small girl with butterfly wings in his lap joyfully tugging on his beard – every single person’s eyes are now on him.

Jack clears his throat, following Bunny’s lead and straightening up from the defensive crouch he’d dropped into, letting the ice daggers he’d been forming in each fist dissipate in a puff of cold wind. “Serious question. Where’d you get your information? Because so far, all I’ve got to go on is a lot of rumour and what’s in my own head, and no offense, but I kinda trust my own head more than some people I only met today.”

Bunny gives Jack a suspicious look for a moment, but then he nods thoughtfully, like he’s decided Jack’s question is legit.

“First time Pitch went rogue,” he says, his voice regaining some of its usual gruffness. “He picked on me like he’s pickin’ on you now, tried ta get me to buy his sob story about how we were all someone before we were chosen. I bought it. Hard.”

“What?” Tooth says, at the same time as Sandy’s eyebrows shoot towards his hairline. “But – but you hate Pitch the most out of all of us!”

“I do _now_ ,” Bunny grumbles, crossing his arms over his chest. “Because the bloody whacker’s been lyin’ to us all along! Tellin’ stonkin’ great porkies about us bein’ snatched away from our lives this whole time just ta wrangle a little sympathy!” He scowled at the floor, huffing out an angry sigh before he continued, “I damn near bailed that CEO dickh- sorry, anklebiters, that _jerk_ Rathburn up for Pitch. I’m just lucky he told me the truth ‘stead of terminatin’ me on the spot.”

“So what _is_ truth?” North says, and Jack catches himself nodding. “What is great secret that Rathburn is telling you, that you are knowing better than our own minds?”

“You’re all clones.”

This time, the voice that interrupts isn’t Jack’s. He spins, already drawing daggers of ice from the air, cursing himself for letting himself get so distracted that he didn’t realise someone was coming up the hall toward them.

But the newcomer doesn’t look like a threat. She doesn’t look much older than the boy with golden eyes (who, Jack notices with a little swell of surprised pride, is also prepared for combat, crouched ready to spring with both fists wreathed in light), she doesn’t have any obvious weapon, and though she holds her head high and her shoulders rigid, she doesn’t move like someone trained in combat. Her arms are crossed, each hand pressed against the opposite elbow, and the look on her face is somewhere between exhausted disbelief and anger.

“ _We’re_ all clones,” she says, as though she’s correcting herself, a flicker of despair flashing across her face for a split second before it’s replaced by the anger again. “They implanted memories from the originals in you because they wanted you to be as good as the originals. But you’re not them. You never were.”

“…Bunny?” North asks, and Tooth stares, intent and expectant, straight at Bunny’s head.

They both seem to deflate when Bunny hesitates, then nods.

“Wait, so who are _you_ , now?” the tall redheaded girl asks, and the girl who says she’s Jack’s sister points.

“Guys, it’s all right, she’s a friend! She’s the one who saved me back in the cells!”

“Well, I wouldn’t exactly say ‘saved’ -” the newcomer starts, but then North gives a little start and smiles in her direction.

“Ah! Little girl! Do you still have knife I gave you?”

The newcomer’s eyes widen, and then she smiles. Jack instantly likes her better. “It’s right here in my pocket. Thank you, again.”

“I told you, it will protect you.” North smiles, a little too mysteriously for Jack’s liking.

“North? You know this child?” Tooth asks, fluttering over, her scales bristling and then falling flat again in shimmering waves, like she can’t decide whether to be defensive or not.

“Not exactly,” the girl says, before North can answer. “He saved me when I tried to rescue – I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.” She pauses, and smiles again, like under any other circumstances she’d have laughed. “I guess you might like to know mine, too. I’m Katherine. My uncle – well, my _guardian_ is Ombric Shalazar.”

The name means nothing to Jack, but he sees Bunny go rigid for a moment and then shift, slightly, to be able to leap into an attack at a moment’s notice. “You’re related ta that drongo?” he growls, and Katherine’s smile slips away, leaving her looking impossibly sad.

“Not…exactly,” she says.

“Wait, back up. Who’s Ombric Shalazar, and why’re we acting like he’s bad news?” Jack asks.

Bunny doesn’t take his eyes off of Katherine as he answers, “Ombric Shalazar’s the one who started alla this.”

Katherine doesn’t say anything.

“Okay,” the small blond boy says, and Bunny blinks, flinching so slightly in surprise that only someone else with arena training would’ve been able to pick up on it. “But that doesn’t mean she’s a bad person, does it? I mean, if she helped Emma…”

“I can vouch for small girl,” North says, straightening up, and Katherine scowls.

“I’m not small!”

“Wait, does this mean we’re not who we think we are?” the tall redheaded girl blurts, curling inwards on herself. “Our memories aren’t real? I don’t really have a mom or a school or friends or -”

One of the twins cuts her off, his voice too solemn for a kid his age as he says, “We aren’t real people?”

“ _No_ ,” Katherine says, almost before the last word is out of his mouth. “No. Maybe what we remember isn’t real. But we _are_.” Her scowl seemed to shift into something more determined as she went on, “And you deserve better this.”

“Like _what_?” Bunny throws his arms wide, gesturing around at the hall they stand in. “No offense ta present company, but we’re a pack of circus freaks! An’ all our memories are false! Even if we did get outta here, we got nowhere else ta go.”

“No,” the golden-eyed boy says, and his voice is so heavy with quiet authority that even Jack turns to look. “Katherine’s right. We don’t have to just take this.”

He reaches down and scoops the small girl with butterfly wings off of North’s knee, setting her on her feet and taking hold of her hand. Jack catches sight of the girl who’d said she was his sister, giving him a strange, sad look, and has to turn away. “Do what you all want, but Sophie deserves better than how we’re growing up, and I’m getting her away from this place.”

“Yeah,” the girl with the spiral horn protruding from her forehead agrees, pounding a fist into the palm of the opposite hand. “Whatever’s out there, it can’t be worse than the arena.”

The twins nod in unison.

“I – I don’t know, guys,” the blond boy stammers, looking warily over at Jack and the Guardians. “That guy’s got a point. If we’re really just copies, then aren’t the originals out there somewhere, still living with the people we remember as our parents? Doesn’t that mean there’s nobody out there waiting for us? We’re just a bunch of kids. What are we gonna _do_?”

No one has an answer.

“We’ll figure it out when we get there,” the boy with the golden eyes says, finally. “It’s okay, Monty. You don’t have to come.”

“No!” the blond boy says, too fast. “No, I don’t want – I just think, maybe, we might want some kind of plan? Or maybe an adult?”

Sandy’s hand shoots up so fast that Jack’s a little surprised he doesn’t hear a sonic boom, and he waves it enthusiastically in the air.

“Nice thought, little man, but you ain’t got a place out there any more’n I’ve got a collection of Fabergé eggs,” Bunny says, but there’s a smile tugging at his lips. “You wouldn’t last ten minutes.”

“What if we all went with them?” Tooth asks. “Surely, with all of us -”

“Toothie, I love you,” Bunny starts, and Tooth jumps in midair, looking around at the others like she’s afraid they’ll be angry. Jack can’t help the swell of anger that wraps around him at the sight. This place has done everything it can to split them up. He sees Bunny’s point, but – he’s not staying here. There’s no way. “But look at yourself. You remember what people look like out there. None of us’ll be able to blend in.”

“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing!” Tooth protests, but Bunny’s shaking his head.

“An’ that’s without counting on needing money if you wanna live out there, and needing documents to prove you exist if you wanna get it – there’s no place in that world for us, Tooth, and you know it!”

“So what are we supposed to do?” Tooth snaps back. “Just sit here and let them hurt innocent children? I remember my training! Don’t you?”

“I don’t like it any more than you do, sheila,” Bunny says, and that’s when Katherine steps forward.

“Wait,” she says. “I think there might be another way.”

…

Kozmotis feels as frozen as his daughter, behind glass.

“Still think I’m _who_?” he asks, and instantly thinks better of it. He should have held his silence.

The man behind him coughs, wetly. “General Kozmotis Pitchiner, of course. You’re not. You never have been.”

Kozmotis draws in a deep breath, and lets it out again, leaning heavily against the glass of his daughter’s coffin. But he’s already spoken.

He pushes himself to his feet and turns to face the man in the suit in a single, elegant sweep of darkness. Kozmotis can see the shadows swirling around him, can barely see through them to the man in the suit, but he can’t find it in himself to care.

A memory of the girl’s frightened face through the shroud of shifting shadows, the piercing pain of Nightlight’s glowing lance, flash in front of Kozmotis’ eyes, and he throws his hands to his sides, forcibly dispelling the shadows that have gathered around him. No. He won’t go there again. He won’t allow himself to be this person. He _won’t_.

As he steadies himself, his bloodied fingers scrape against the glass that Seraphina lies trapped beneath.

The sharp scent of fear trickles into the stale air of the vault, the man in the suit tossing his head back in a display of false confidence. “You were grown in a test tube from his genetic material,” he sneers, and Kozmotis can taste the uncertainty he’s trying to cover. “You’re a failed experiment, and that’s all you’ll ever be. That thing behind you? That’s not your daughter. It’s nothing but raw material for Project Guardian.” His lips twist in a cruel smile as he adds, “Maybe, if it’s lucky, it’ll actually be a success.”

The throttling tendril of darkness is already wound around the man’s neck before Kozmotis realises he’s even moved. He looks at his own upraised hand like it belongs to a stranger. It might as well.

He slowly, slowly lowers the man in the suit back down, sets him gently on his feet on the floor and withdraws the tendril of darkness.

“Let her out,” Kozmotis says. He’s surprised by the rasp in his own voice, frayed at the edges.

The man in the suit shrugs one shoulder, tugging at his collar. His face is slowly fading from tomato red back into a much more human pink, and he’s obviously struggling not to suck in huge gasps of air. The scent of his fear is heavier on the air now, like a thick miasma, piling upon itself.

“If…that’s what…you want,” he manages, his voice sounding rough and choked, still, even though Kozmotis released him.

And then he smiles, and slaps his hand against a panel on the wall beside him.

There’s a hiss, like escaping steam or moving hydraulics, and the glass behind Kozmotis begins to move. Kozmotis stumbles forwards, throwing up a shield of solid shadow between him and the man in the suit as he turns to watch the glass cover of Seraphina’s coffin slide slowly open, condensation swirling into clouds of roiling white mist as she thaws.

Kozmotis’ relief is cut abruptly short by the laughter that rises from behind him. It’s choked and wheezing, but the man in the suit is forcing it out nonetheless, even as he leans heavily on his knees, clearly trying to catch his breath. Kozmotis tests the air, but the note of fear has all but completely faded.

Something’s wrong.

The man in the suit shouts, “Gaia!”, and Seraphina’s eyes snap open.

Kozmotis can barely resist the urge to run to her, to gather her up in his arms and tell her that it’s all right, everything is okay now, she’s safe, he’ll never let anything harm her again. Seraphina hasn’t reacted to his presence. Her face is blank, expressionless, her gaze trained forward and staring past her father, her posture rigid, her arms stiff at her sides. Something about all of this is very, very wrong.

“Sera?” he asks, rather than move.

Seraphina doesn’t respond, doesn’t so much as glance in his direction.

“Gaia,” the man in the suit says, from behind Kozmotis. His voice sounds like it’s beginning to recover. “Execute command sequence 167.”

Seraphina blinks.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she turns her head to look at her father with perfect, unconcerned coolness.

There’s no recognition in her eyes.

“Sera,” Kozmotis gasps, feeling suddenly like the protective shield of shadows he’s cloaked himself in is smothering him, swallowing him down. He tears them away, like cobwebs, but they cling around his arms and pile up around his feet almost as though they’re reluctant to leave him, reluctant to let him stand unprotected. “It’s me, it’s your father, please -”

He breaks off his own sentence, not knowing what plea he’d been about to make. It doesn’t make a difference, anyway. Seraphina’s expression doesn’t shift, doesn’t so much as flicker.

“Have…fun…catching up,” the man in the suit says, snottily, and then turns and bolts. Kozmotis flicks a shadow after him, trying to snag him around the ankle, but he’s already out the door. Kozmotis hears the heavy vault door creak, and then, it slams shut with a final-sounding _boom_ behind him.

There’s a sound behind him, a crackle and a snap, and Kozmotis feels a chill race up his back. He doesn’t want to turn around.

When he finally does force himself to turn, slowly, Seraphina has freed herself from the blue-lit frost that had held her in the coffin. She steps down from the coffin, and then stands, still, her green eyes blank and impassive as they stare through Kozmotis.

She doesn’t move.

“Seraphina?” Kozmotis all but whispers.

Seraphina raises a hand, and vines burst from the floor.


	19. Chapter 19

Nightlight finds his Man of Moon looking troubled.

His Man of Moon is staring at a very large screen, frowning thoughtfully at the scenes it shows. Nightlight sees, from above and a little to the right, the girl Katherine, waving her hands at a group of Small Ones and Guardians. He sees the Tall One, her uncle Ombric, alone in his study, his face in his hands. He sees red lights flashing over the empty cells of the dormitory wing. He sees the Dark One being hurled across the cryo vault by a tendril of strong, winding greenery.

Nightlight’s Man of Moon looks up when Nightlight enters the room, and smiles. His voice is bright and cheerful, though, Nightlight sees, his smile is sad. ”Ah! My Nightlight. Come here, and tell me if you can see how all these things fit together.”

Nightlight drifts up to the screen. On the screen, Katherine half-turns, so that her tiny face can be seen. Nightlight reaches out and gently brushes the tip of one finger over it.

When he pulls back, his Man of Moon is looking at him with that strange, sad smile.

“My Nightlight,” he says, and his smile grows sadder even as it grows wider. “I need you to do one more favour for me.”

…

Kozmotis slams against the vault door, driving all the breath from his lungs, and then drops to the floor.

He lands in a heap, limbs akimbo, shadows puddled around him like dark robes. There’s a vicious rip of pain all up his right side when he tries to draw breath. Broken ribs, almost certainly. Add those to the list.

There’s a rustling from in front of him, like wind through autumn leaves. This time, Kozmotis doesn’t even try to rise to his feet. There would be no point. He can’t defend himself.

He can’t bring himself to do anything that might harm his daughter.

This time, the lashing tendril of vine wraps itself around his neck, hauls him to his feet and then up off of them. Kozmotis dangles, helplessly, kicking at thin air even as he struggles futilely with the vine that’s choking him. His right wrist burns in protest as he tries to grip the vine, but his screaming need for oxygen finally wins out over the pain.

Seraphina stares up at him, one arm extended, her eyes solid green from corner to corner, blank and expressionless.

Kozmotis tries, with the last dregs of his remaining breath, to gasp her name. All that comes out is a strangled sound, and he feels something warm and wet bubble past his lips. Maybe saliva. Maybe blood.

His vision is beginning to fade into darkness around the edges, but Kozmotis can see that Seraphina’s perfectly impassive expression doesn’t shift, not even slightly. There’s no hint of recognition in her eerie green gaze.

This is not his daughter.

The shadows whisper agreement, coiling serpentine around his arms, around the vine holding him, around Seraphina’s throat. The vine releases its grasp, and Kozmotis tumbles back to the concrete floor, his lungs shrieking in protest. There’s still that tearing pain all up his side, and his wrist is throbbing, low and deep.

The throbbing is echoed in his chest, a hot, dark fury that jabs at him like his broken ribs with each laboured breath. Even as he gasps Seraphina’s name once more, one last futile, desperate hope, it grows spikes, ripping at his insides. He is a fool. He is a sentimental, _stupid_ old fool, and he will die here, alone, at the hands of this heartless creature that dares to wear his daughter’s face.

All because he’s too weak to defend himself. All because he is too stubborn, too selfish, to see the truth.

He is Pitch Black. Nothing more. Nothing less.

And this thing in front of him is not his daughter.

…

The hall leading to the cryo vault is thick with sick, oily shadows. They do not creep away or shrivel when Nightlight’s light touches them; rather, they coil like snakes, hissing venomously, only to spring back into place as soon as Nightlight passes by. When Nightlight spins to look over his shoulder, a mass of shadows recoils from just behind his shoulders.

Nightlight frowns, but he presses on.

By the time he reaches the vault door, the entire hallway is swamped in shadows so thick that even his piercing light cannot penetrate them. The walls are dim suggestions behind the veil of whispering, curdling dark. The vault door has vanished in the blackness.

There is a Tall One in that blackness. The dark colour of his suit blends with the shadows surrounding him. Nightlight draws his dagger, but this is not the Dark One that his Man of Moon had sent him for. The shadows have swallowed this Tall One’s legs to the waist, and draw tight around his thick arms and broad chest as he thrusts out a hand, reaching desperately for the glow of Nightlight’s dagger. Tendrils of shadow drag the Tall One back towards where the vault door must be hidden, sucking him deeper into that pool of perfect blackness even as he struggles, reaching out to Nightlight.

The Tall One’s voice is panicked, his eyes wild, snot streaming down his face. Somehow, though, his words still come out not as a plea, but as a demand.

“Dammit, don’t just stand there! _Help_ me, you – miserable little glowworm!”

Nightlight crosses his arms, leaning back in midair with a frown. He recognises this Tall One, now, has seen him with Nightlight’s Man of Moon many times. His Man of Moon has never liked this Tall One, and Nightlight finds he agrees with his Man of Moon’s assessment.

The face of the Tall One grows paler and paler, twisting in horror as shadows creep up his neck.

“You useless – I’ll have you terminated for this!” The Tall One has to pause, a wet, sticky cough rattling out of his throat. Nightlight wrinkles his nose, holding a hand in front of his face. “What’s wrong with you? What idiot programmed you? I command you – _help me!_ ”

Nightlight takes a deep breath, and lets it out slowly as he leans in close to the Tall One’s face. A few questing shadows peel away from the Tall One’s chin and cheeks as Nightlight reaches out with one finger, and gently, lightly, taps the Tall One right on the end of the nose.

The Tall One looks dumbfounded.

Nightlight gives the Tall One his best, brightest, trickiest grin. His voice is very soft, but in the darkness, it carries. “I don’t take orders from you.”

He draws back, sitting on thin air and leaning back with his arms tucked behind his head. The Tall One’s face twists, and Nightlight thinks, for a moment, that he’s going to yell. The moment he opens his mouth, though, the shadows flood up and over his face, sucking him down into the darkness.

The Tall One is gone.

Nightlight nods, once, satisfied. Then he straightens up again, making his way forwards into the cloud of solid darkness that has just devoured the Tall One. He holds his dagger high, its light flaring brilliantly, and the shadows roll reluctantly back, to reveal the enormous vault door at the end of the hall.

They also reveal the Tall One, lying on the ground. He does not move when Nightlight drifts over him. He does not move at all.

The vault door will not open, no matter what Nightlight tries. There is a muffled thumping and banging coming from the other side of the door, and Nightlight hears something like a shout, very quickly cut off. The shadows seethe around his feet.

Nightlight gives the enormous wheel attached to the door one last, useless wrench, and draws back with a sigh, brushing a stray lock of hair back from his forehead. He can’t get this door to open.

But, he thinks, as a memory strikes him, he may know someone who can.

…

Ombric looks up when Katherine pushes open the office door. For just a moment, laying eyes on her, his whole face lights up, like she’s only ever seen it do when he’s finally understanding a programming thing, or perhaps when he’s found a copy of a rare book he was looking for in a thrift store bargain bin.

Then he sees who’s accompanying her, and his face falls again.

When he speaks, his voice is heavy, resigned. “Katherine?”

Katherine manages not to call him ‘uncle’. It’s surprisingly difficult. “Ombric.” She opens her mouth to speak, and realises that she has no idea what to say. All of her icy detachment seems to flow out of her with the long breath that she exhales, leaving her feeling small again. “We – _I_ need your help. Please.”

Ombric looks, long and hard, over Katherine’s shoulders at the Guardians who have followed her to the office. Then his gaze flicks downwards, and Katherine looks down, as well. The little girl with the butterfly wings has squeezed past the adults, and she’s standing by Katherine’s side, looking curiously around at the glowing screens and twinkling lights that fill the room.

Ombric lets out a breath, and slumps forward, like the weight of ages has come to rest on his skinny shoulders. He looks so like an old man, in ways that Katherine had never noticed before today.

“What do you need?” he asks.

Katherine takes one hesitant step forward, into the office. Ombric doesn’t move.

“You knew the Moons,” she says, after a moment’s thought, carefully lining the words up in her head. “You know their son. This, all of this, needs to stop. And they - _we_ need somewhere to go.” She thinks a little more. “Somewhere where we can be people, and not just weapons or toys. If you could speak to Mr. Moon -”

“What good do you think that would do?” Ombric asks, raising his head. “I told you, Katherine. You’re much too young to know about any of this, but – Moonclipper Corp is still owned and operated by the trustee.” He sighs, heavily, clasping his hands in front of him as he straightens up in his seat. “I – I can protect you, so long as I do what they want. There’s no need for anything to change. You can come home with me, and everything can be exactly as it was before.”

For just a moment, a dark, yawning chasm of a moment, Katherine wants nothing more than to believe him.

Then she glances down, at the little blonde girl who is excitedly trying to climb one of Ombric’s towering stacks of books, and her resolve hardens.

“And what about the others?” she asks, hurrying over to lift the little girl down from the precariously wobbling stack. “I can’t just leave everyone here to their fates. This is wrong, and you know it, or you wouldn’t feel so miserable about it! _Please_ , Uncle Ombric.” The word slips through her lips before she can stop it, and Katherine nearly drops the little girl to clap both hands over her mouth.

Ombric looks as though she’s slapped him right across his face.

“Katherine…” he starts, and then stops, looking lost. It’s a look Katherine has never seen him wear before. He’s always seemed so wise, so sure. He’s always seemed to know what to do.

“Please,” Katherine repeats. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to say. “At least try?”

Ombric’s eyes flick back over Katherine’s shoulder again, and Katherine turns, to see the Guardian who calls himself Bunny with his claws out and his arms raised, the one called Tooth with her razorblade wings whirring, and North, the one who’d saved her back in the cells, with a hand on his sword and a pointed glare on his face. Katherine can’t help but sigh, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“We _talked_ about this,” she huffs. “No threatening my uncle.”

“Not even one little threat?” North asks, and Katherine barely resists the urge to roll her eyes.

“None of you are helping,” she mutters, under her breath.

And that’s when she catches sight of a familiar glow from the back of the little crowd of people gathered around the office door. It’s a pale, blue-green moonlight gleam, and it makes Katherine’s heart jump up into her throat.

“Excuse me, please,” she says, shouldering her way between North and Bunny. “And _no_ threatening my uncle. I mean it.”

Even though she’s already expecting to see him, Katherine still feels a little thrill of surprise when she pushes her way past the three Guardians and sees Nightlight, hovering at the other side of the hall. He beams when he sees her, quite literally, his usual glow brightening all around him as an enormous smile splits his face. Katherine feels the corners of her own mouth turning up into a smile, without her even having to think about it.

“Nightlight!” she says, and Jack, who’s been holding a long rod of ice like a spear or a staff between him and Nightlight, relaxes a little.

“You know this guy?”

“It’s all right!” Katherine calls out, hurrying over to Jack’s side and pushing the staff down. “He got me to open the door to the cells. I think he’s on our side.” She doesn’t mention how he’d led her to Kozmotis. Somehow, she doesn’t think that that particular story would count in Nightlight’s favour with the Guardians.

Nightlight nods furiously, then turns a quick somersault in midair, apparently just for the fun of it. Katherine knows that nothing is all right, that nothing is funny, but nevertheless, she can’t hold down the giggle.

Jack looks from Katherine to Nightlight with a look that turns from confused, to entirely too knowing. “ _Ooooh_ kay,” he says, leaning on the staff of ice he’s conjured, and grinning at Katherine like a shark.

“Now’s not the time for twitterpation,” Bunny complains, from behind her, and Katherine spins, feeling her cheeks burning. “What’s the glowworm want?”

Nightlight sticks his tongue out in Bunny’s direction, and Jack laughs.

“Okay, I could learn to like this guy.”

“Nightlight?” Katherine asks, and Nightlight nods. He points down the hall towards the elevators, turns another quick midair somersault, and then shoots off like a comet in the direction he just pointed.

“Wait!” Katherine calls, hurrying after him.

…

It’s getting hard to breathe.

Not just because of the pain in his side. Kozmotis is fairly sure that one of the ribs Seraphina – or the thing that looks like Seraphina – had broken has pierced his lung. He’s probably drowning in his own blood right now. That might account for the way his vision is blackening around the edges. Or perhaps that’s major blood loss, or a concussion from the number of times he’s been thrown against the walls. He’s started to lose track of all of his injuries.

A vine tucks itself under his chin, lifting his head to look at Seraphina as she steps towards him. Her expression hasn’t changed at all, still that same perfect, impassive indifference.

It strikes Kozmotis, suddenly and with perfect clarity, that he really is going to die here.

Perhaps it’s for the best. The thought nearly shocks even him out of his haze, but the more he dwells upon it, the more sense it makes. Of course, the man who’d locked him here might have been lying, but that doesn’t add up. He’d have known Kozmotis couldn’t fight back against his own daughter, would have known that Kozmotis wouldn’t be walking away from this fight. He would have had nothing to gain from lying. And besides, much as Kozmotis wants to deny them, the man’s words have the ring of truth to them. If he were truly General Kozmotis Pitchiner, surely no one could have spirited him out of his own home to this place. Surely he would have memories of how he’d come to be in this facility, rather than a disturbing blank.

Surely Seraphina would be somewhere in this shell that resembles her, somewhere he might be able to reach her.

No. There’s no point in denying it anymore. The truth that Kozmotis has been trying to hide from, trying to deny, trying to pretend that he doesn’t know, is staring him in the face, and he’s too tired and too hurt to turn away.

The whispers and the shadows and his own dark dreams have all been correct. He’s never been anything but Pitch Black. He’s never been anything but the monster.

Maybe better, then, that his story ends here.

The thing wearing Seraphina’s face kneels down, reaching out to gently cup his head in both her hands. No doubt, she plans to snap his neck. Kozmotis drinks in the sight of her face, the last thing he knows he’ll ever see. Tries to imagine her familiar eyes, in place of these eerie green ones. Tries to imagine her familiar, mischievous smile.

He shuts his eyes.

And throws every shadow he has against the thing that _dares_ to pretend to be his daughter.

The creature wearing Seraphina’s face gives a short, pained cry as she flies backwards, abruptly cut off when she slams against the wall of glass across the room. She slides down to the floor, landing on her feet and one hand like a cat, before straightening up, throwing out a hand.

Vines burst through the concrete all around Kozmotis, joining together above him into one thick pillar of vegetation that dives down towards him like a freight train. Kozmotis gestures, and shadows follow the arc of his gesture, a dark blade slicing each of the vines off at the base. They fall on him, their intent and power lost, just a tangle of harmless greenery.

Kozmotis pushes himself up to one knee, ignoring the burn that rips up his side and the screaming pain from his wrenched ankle and the way his vision goes abruptly dark. The creature with Seraphina’s face waves a hand, and another wall of vines rips through the wall, speeding towards him. Kozmotis throws out both arms and the shadows respond, sweeping up and over him into a perfect sphere. The vines bounce harmlessly off its curved sides.

Kozmotis stands.

He’s breathing hard, now, has to swipe the back of one hand across his mouth to wipe away the blood, and it takes a moment for his head to stop spinning. Every inch of him hurts.

The thing with Seraphina’s face raises a hand, and Kozmotis flicks his uninjured wrist. Shadow coils around her arm, yanks it roughly down. Her scream is sharp and pained and quickly smothered by the shadow that wraps around her neck, picks her up like a ragdoll, and slams her, hard, against the wall of glass.

That hot, dark, ugly throb is back, filling his chest, and he gestures and the shadow slams her into the glass again, and again, and again until the back of her head leaves a bloody smear on the glass each time the shadow pulls her back. The vault is silent and still except for the choked noises that the thing impersonating Seraphina makes and the ragged sound of Kozmotis’ own breathing, rough and raw and unhealthily wet. Nothing here is afraid and the thought makes Kozmotis pause, after giving the thing with Seraphina’s face one last vicious slam against the glass.

She isn’t afraid.

He wonders, briefly, if she’s human enough to feel fear. If _he_ is. He’s certainly not human enough to feel love, if this is any evidence.

He half-turns, just enough to see his own reflection in the glass coffins to his left.

Just enough to see its wicked, enormous smile.

Kozmotis turns back to the thing with Seraphina’s face. She doesn’t look well. Blood is streaming down out of her hair, over her face. Her arm dangles at an awkward angle, and her lips are rapidly turning blue.

The shadow holding her up uncurls, and drops her, unceremoniously, in a tangle of limbs on the concrete. Kozmotis hurries over, as best he can with his wrenched ankle, but she doesn’t move.

Until her head snaps up, her green eyes locking with his.

Kozmotis takes a step back.

The thing with Seraphina’s face raises its uninjured arm, and the vines that had burst through the walls shoot forward to wrap around Kozmotis. He forms shadow into a blade again, cuts himself free, just in time for a tree to roar up out of the floor directly below his feet. He stumbles backwards, again, falling backwards with a painful jolt as he scrambles away from the rapidly-growing vegetation. If he hadn’t moved, he’s certain he would have been torn in two.  

The thing with Seraphina’s face pushes herself to her feet. Her arm still dangles uselessly, her dark hair falling over her face as she drags herself towards Kozmotis. The blood covering half of her face makes the green of her eyes almost seem to glow.

“Seraphina,” Kozmotis says, not to this apparition, more to the thin air around him. To the daughter, somewhere, who was never really his.

And that’s when he hears the vault door behind him hiss open, and a familiar voice say, “Gaia? Stand down.”


End file.
